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FOLLE-FAKIJSTE 


^  *• 


AUTHOR  OF    " STRATHMOR*// 


By  OUIDA,  ■•tV, 


CHANDOS,"    "IDALIA,"   "  TRICOTRIN,"   "PUCK,' 
'  GRANVILLE  DE  VIGNE,"   "  UNDER  TWO   FLAGS,''  ETC. 


1  Un  gazetier  fumeux  qui  se  croit  un  flambeau 
Dit  au  pauvre  qu'il  a  noy6  dans  les  tfinebres: 

Ou  done  l'apergois-tu  ce  Createur  du  Beau? 
Ce  Redresseur  que  tu  celebres?" 

Baudelaire. 


[PHILADELPHIA: 

J.   B.    LIPPINCOTT    &    CO. 

i  8 1 1. 


75  b  - 

0  33-1 


fr 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1871,  by 

J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT    &    CO., 
In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress  at  Washington. 


L^.     MEMOIEE 


D'INGRES, 


PEINTRE-POETE 


961739 


FOLLE-FARINE. 


BOOK   I. 


CHAPTER.  I. 

Not  the  wheat  itself;  not  even  so  much  as  the  chaff; 
only  the  dust  from  the  corn.  The  dust  which  no  one 
needs  or  notices ;  the  mock  farina  which  flies  out  from 
under  the  two  revolving  circles  of  the  grindstones  ;  the 
impalpable  cloud  which  goes  forth  to  gleam  golden  in 
the  sun  a  moment,  and  then  is  scattered — on  the  wind, 
into  the  water,  up  in  the  sunlight,  down  in  the  mud. 
What  matters  ?  who  cares  ? 

Only  the  dust :  a  mote  in  the  air  ;  a  speck  in  the  light; 
a  black  spot  in  the  living  daytime ;  a  colorless  atom  in 
the  immensity  of  the  atmosphere,  borne  up  one  instant 
to  gleam  against  the  sky,  dropped  down  the  next  to  lie 
in  a  fetid  ditch. 

Only  the  dust :  the  dust  that  flows  out  from  between 
the  grindstones,  grinding  exceeding  hard  and  small,  as 
the  religion  which  calls  itself  Love  avers  that  its  God 
does  grind  the  world. 

*  It  is  a  nothing,  less  than  nothing.  The  stones  turn  ; 
the  dust  is  born  ;  it  has  a  puff  of  life ;  it  dies.  Who 
cares  ?  No  one.  Not  the  good  God  ;  not  any  man  ;  not 
even  the  devil.  It  is  a  thing  even  devil-deserted.  Ah, 
it  is  very  like  you,"  said  the  old  miller,  watching  the 
millstones. 

Folle-Farine  heard — she  had  heard  a  hundred  times, — 
and  held  her  peace. 

Folle-Farine  :  the  dust ;  only  the  dust. 

As  good  a  name  as  any  other  for  a  nameless  creature. 
The  dust, — sharp-winnowed  and  rejected  of  all,  as  less 

(9) 


10  .FOLLE-FARINE. 

worthy  than  even  the  shred  husks  and  the  shattered 
ttalhs. 

Folie-F-arine, — she  watched  the  dust  fly  in  and  out  all 
day  long  from  between  the  grindstones.  She  only  won- 
dered why,  if  she  and  the  dust  were  thus  kindred  and 
namesakes,  the  wind  flew  away  with  the  dust  so  merci- 
fully, and  yet  never  would  fly  away  with  her. 

The  dust  was  carried  away  by  the  breeze,  and  wan- 
dered wherever  it  listed.  The  dust  had  a  sweet,  short, 
summer-day  life  of  its  own  ere  it  died.  If  it  were  worth- 
less, it  at  least  was  fjjee.  It  could  lie  in  the  curl  of  a 
green  leaf,  or  on  the  wnite  breast  of  a  flower.  It  could 
mingle  with  the  golden  dust  in  a  lily,  and  almost  seem  to 
be  one  with  it.  It  could  fly  with  the  thistle-down,  and 
with  the  feathers  of  the  dandelion,  on  every  roving 
wind  that  blew. 

In  a  vague  dreamy  fashion,  the  child  wondered  why 
the  dust  was  so  much  better  dealt  with  than  she  was. 

'  Folle-Farine  1  Folle  —  Folle— Folle  —  Farinel"  the 
other  children  hooted  after  her,  echoing  the  name  by 
which  the  grim  humor  of  her  bitter-tongued  taskmaster 
had  called  her.  She  had  got  used  to  it,  and  answered 
to  it  as  others  to  their  birthnames. 

It  meant  that  she  was  a  thing  utterly  useless,  abso- 
lutely worthless ;  the  very  refuse  of  the  winnowings  of 
the  flail  of  fate.  But  she  accepted  that  too,  so  far  as 
she  understood  it;  she  only  sometimes  wondered  in  a 
dull  fierce  fashion  why,  if  she  and  the  dust  were  sisters, 
the  dust  had  its  wings  while  she  had  none. 

All  day  long  the  dust  flew  in  and  out  and  about  as  it 
liked,  through  the  open  doors,  and  among  the  tossing 
boughs,  and  through  the  fresh  cool  mists,  and  down  the 
golden  shafts  of  the  sunbeams ;  and  all  day  long  she 
stayed  in  one  place  and  toiled,  and  was  first  beaten  and 
then  cursed,  or  first  cursed  and  then  beaten, — which  was 
all  the  change  that  her  life  knew.  For  herself,  she  saw 
no  likeness  betwixt  her  and  the  dust ;  for  that  escaped 
from  the  scourge  and  flew  forth,  but  she  abode  under  the 
flail,  always. 

Nevertheless,  Folle-Farine  was  all  the  name  she  knew. 

The  great  black  wheel   churned   and  circled  in  the 


FOLLE-FARINE.  11 

brook  water,  and  lichens  and  ferns  and  mosses  made 
lovely  all  the  dark,  shadowy,  silent  place ;  the  red  mill 
roof  gleamed  in  the  sun,  under  a  million  summer  leaves; 
the  pigeons  came  and  went  all  day  in  and  out  of  their 
holes  in  the  wall ;  the  sweet  scents  of  ripening  fruits  in 
many  orchards  filled  the  air  ;  the  great  grindstones  turned 
and  turned  and  turned,  and  the  dust  floated  forth  to  dance 
with  the  gnat  and  to  play  with  the  sunbeam. 

Folle-Farine  sat  aloft,  on  the  huge,  black,  wet  timbers 
above  the  wheel,  and  watched  with  her  thoughtful  eyes, 
and  wondered  again,  after  her  own  fashion,  why  her 
namesake  had  thus  liberty  to  fly  forth  whilst  she  had 
none. 

Suddenly  a  shrill,  screaming  voice  broke  the  stillness 
savagely. 

"  Little  devil !"  cried  the  miller,  "  go  fetch  me  those 
sacks,  and  carry  them  within,  and  pile  them ;  neatly,  do 
you  hear  ?     Like  the  piles  of  stone  in  the  road." 

Folle-Farine  swung  down  from  the  timbers  in  obedi- 
ence to  the  command,  and  went  to  the  heap  of  sacks  that 
lay  outside  the  mill ;  small  sacks,  most  of  them  ;  all  of 
last  year's  flour. 

There  wa3  an  immense  gladiolus  growing  near,  in  the 
mill-garden,  where  they  were;  a  tall  flower  all  scarlet 
and  gold,  and  straight  as  a  palm,  with  bees  sucking  into 
its  bells,  and  butterflies  poising  on  its  stem.  She  stood  a 
moment  looking  at  its  beauty  ;  she  was  scarce  any  higher 
than  its  topmost  bud,  and  was  in  her  way  beautiful,  some- 
thing after  its  fashion.  She  was  a  child  of  six  or  eight 
years,  with  limbs  moulded  like  sculpture,  and  brown  as 
the  brook  water;  great  lustrous  eyes,  half  savage  and 
half  soft;  a  mouth  like  a  red  pomegranate  bud,  and 
straight  dark  brows — the  brows  of  the  friezes  of  Egypt. 

Her  only  clothing  was  a  short  white  linen  kirtle, 
knotted  around  her  waist,  and  falling  to  her  knees  ;  and 
her  skin  was  burned,  by  exposure  in  the  sun,  to  a  golden- 
brown  color,  though  in  texture  it  was  soft  as  velvet,  and 
showed  all  the  veins  like  glass.  Standing  there  in  the  deep 
grass,  with  the  great  scarlet  flower  against  her,  and  pur- 
ple butterflies  over  her  head,  an  artist  would  have  painted 
her  and  called  her  by  a  score  of  names,  and  described  for 


12  FOLLE-FARINE. 

her  some  mystical  or  noble  fate :  as  Anteros,  perhaps,  or 
as  the  doomed  son  of  Procne,  or  as  some  child  born  to 
the  Forsaken  in  the  savage  forests  of  Naxos,  or  conceived 
by  Persephone,  in  the  eternal  night  of  hell,  while  still 
the  earth  lay  black  and  barren  and  fruitless,  under  the 
ban  and  curse  of  a  bereaved  maternity. 

But  here  she  had  only  one  name,  Folle-Farine ;  and 
here  she  had  only  to  labor  drearily  and  stupidly  like  the 
cattle  of  the  field ;  without  their  strength,  and  with 
barely  so  much  even  as  their  scanty  fare  and  begrudged 
bed. 

The  sunbeams  that  fell  on  her  might  find  out  that  she 
had  a  beauty  which  ripened  and  grew  rich  under  their 
warmth,  like  that  of  a  red  flower  bud  or  a  golden  autumn 
fruit.  But  nothing  else  ever  did.  In  none  of  the  eyes 
that  looked  on  her  had  she  any  sort  of  loveliness.  She 
was  Folle-Farine ;  a  little  wicked  beast  that  only  merited 
at  best  a  whip  and  a  cruel  word,  a  broken  crust  and  a 
malediction  ;  a  thing  born  of  the  devil,  and  out  of  which 
the  devil  needed  to  be  scourged  incessantly. 

The  sacks  were  all  small ;  they  were  the  property 
of  the  peasant  proprietors  of  the  district, — a  district  of 
western  Normandy.  But  though  small  they  were  heavy 
in  proportion  to  her  age  and  power.  She  lifted  one, 
although  with  effort,  yet  with  the  familiarity  of  an  accus- 
tomed action ;  poised  it  on  her  back,  clasped  it  tight 
with  her  round  slender  arms,  and  carried  it  slowly 
through  the  open  door  of  the  mill.  That  one  put  down 
upon  the  bricks,  she  came  for  a  second, — a  third, — a 
fourth, — a  fifth, — a  sixth,  working  doggedly,  patiently 
and  willingly,  as  a  little  donkey  works. 

The  sacks  were  in  all  sixteen  ;  before  the  seventh  she 
paused. 

It  was  a  hot  day  in  mid-August :  she  was  panting  and 
burning  with  the  exertion ;  the  bloom  in  her  cheeks  had 
deepened  to  scarlet ;  she  stood  a  moment,  resting,  bath- 
ing her  face  in  the  sweet  coolness  of  a  white  tall  tuft  of 
lilies. 

The  miller  looked  round  where  he  worked,  among  his 
beans  and  cabbages,  and  saw. 

"  Little  mule  !    Little  beast !w  he  cried.    "  Would  you 


FOLLE-FARINE.  13 

be  lazy — you  J — who  have  no  more  right  to  live  at  all 
than  an  eft,  or  a  stoat,  or  a  toad  ?" 

And  as  he  spoke  he  came  toward  her.  He  had  caught 
up  a  piece  of  rope  with  which  he  had  been  about  to  tie 
his  tall  beans  to  a  stake,  and  he  struck  the  child  with  it. 
The  sharp  cord  bit  the  flesh  cruelly,  curling  round  her 
bare  chest  and  shoulders,  and  leaving  a  livid  mark. 

She  quivered  a  little,  but  she  said  nothing ;  she  lifted 
her  head  and  looked  at  him,  and  dropped  her  hands  to 
her  sides.  Her  great  eyes  glowed  fiercely ;  her  red 
curling  lips  shut  tight ;  her  straight  brows  drew  together. 

"  Little  devil !  Will  you  work  now  ?"  said  the  miller. 
"  Do  you  think  you  are  to  stand  in  the  sun  and  smell  at 
flowers — you  ?    Pouf-f-f  1" 

Folle-Farine  did  not  move. 

"  Pick  up  the  sacks  this  moment,  little  brute,"  said  the 
miller.  "If  you  stand  still  a  second  before  they  are  all 
housed,  you  shall  have  as  many  stripes  as  there  are  sacks 
left  untouched.     Oh-he,  do  you  hear?" 

She  heard,  but  she  did  not  move. 

"Do  you  hear?"  he  pursued.  "As  many  strokes  as 
there  are  sacks,  little  wretch.  Now — I  will  give  you 
three  moments  to  choose.     One  1" 

Folle-Farine  still  stood  mute  and  immovable,  her  head 
erect,  her  arms  crossed  on  her  chest.  A  small,  slender, 
bronze-hued,  half-nude  figure  among  the  ruby  hues  of  the 
gladioli  and  the  pure  snowlike  whiteness  of  the  lilies. 

"Two!" 

She  stood  in  the  same  attitude,  the  sacks  lying  un- 
touched at  her  feet,  a  purple- winged  butterfly  lighting  on 
her  head. 

"Three!" 

She  was  still  mute ;  still  motionless. 

He  seized  her  by  the  shoulder  with  one  hand,  and  with 
the  other  lifted  the  rope. 

It  curled  round  her  breast  and  back,  again  and  again  and 
again ;  she  shuddered,  but  she  did  not  utter  a  single  cry. 
He  struck  her  the  ten  times  ;  with  the  same  number  of 
strokes  as  there  remained  sacks  unearned.  He  did  not 
exert  any  great  strength,  for  had  he  used  his  uttermost 
he  would  have  killed  her,  and  she  was  of  value  to  him  j 

2 


14  FOLLE-FARINK 

but  he  scourged  her  with  a  merciless  exactitude  in  the 
execution  of  his  threat,  and  the  rope  was  soon  wet  with 
drops  of  her  bright  young  blood. 

The  noonday  sun  fell  golden  all  around ;  the  deep 
sweet  peace  of  the  silent  country  reigned  everywhere ; 
the  pigeons  fled  to  and  fro  in  and  out  of  their  little  arched 
homes ;  the  millstream  flowed  on,  singing  a  pleasant 
song ;  now  and  then  a  ripe  apricot  dropped  with  a  low 
sound  on  the  turf;  close  about  was  all  the  radiance  of 
summer  flowers  ;  of  heavy  rich  roses,  of  yellow  lime 
tufts,  of  sheaves  of  old-fashioned  comely  phlox,  and  all 
the  delicate  shafts  of  the  graceful  lilies.  And  in  the 
warmth  the  child  shuddered  under  the  scourge  ;  against 
the  light  the  black  rope  curled  like  a  serpent  darting  to 
sting;  among  the  sun-fed  blossoms  there  fell  a  crimson 
stain. 

But  ne'ver  a  word  had  she  uttered.  She  endured  to 
the  tenth  stroke  in  silence. 

He  flung  the  cord  aside  among  the  grass.  "  Daughter 
of  devils  1  —  what  strength  the  devil  gives!"  he  mut- 
tered. 

Folle-Farine  said  nothing.  Her  face  was  livid,  her 
back  bruised  and  lacerated,  her  eyes  still  glanced  with 
undaunted  scorn  and  untamed  passion.  Still  she  said 
nothing  ;  but,  as  his  hand  released  her,  she  darted  as 
noiselessly  as  a  lizard  to  the  water's  edge,  set  her  foot  on 
the  lowest  range  of  the  woodwork,  and  in  a  second  leaped 
aloft  to  the  highest  point,  and  seated  herself  astride  on 
that  crossbar  of  black  timber  on  which  she  had  been 
throned  when  he  had  summoned  her  first,  above  the  foam 
of  the  churning  wheels,  and  in  the  deepest  shadow  of 
innumerable  leaves. 

Then  she  lifted  up  a  voice  as  pure,  as  strong,  as  fresh 
as  the  voice  of  a  mavis  in  May-time,  and  sang,  with  reck- 
less indifference,  a  stave  of  song  in  a  language  unknown 
to  any  of  the  people  of  that  place  ;  a  loud  fierce  air,  with 
broken  words  of  curious  and  most  dulcet  melody,  which 
rang  loud  and  defiant,  yet  melancholy,  even  in  their  re- 
bellion, through  the  foliage,  and  above  the  sound  of  the 
loud  mill  water. 

"  It  is  a  chant  to  the  foul  fiend,"  the  miller  muttered 


FOLLE-FARINE.  15 

to  himself.     "  Well,  why  does  he  not  come  and  take  his 
own  ?  he  would  be  welcome  to  it." 

And  he  went  and  sprinkled  holy  water  on  his  rope, 
and  said  an  ave  or  two  over  it  to  exorcise  it. 

Every  fiber  of  her  childish  body  ached  and  throbbed  ; 
the  stripes  on  her  shoulders  burned  like  flame  ;  her  little 
brain-was  dizzy ;  her  little  breast  was  black  with  bruises; 
but  still  she  sang  on,  clutching  the  timber  with  her  hands 
to  keep  her  from  falling  into  the  foam  below,  and  flashing 
her  fierce  proud  eyes  down  through  the  shade  of  the 
leaves. 

"  Can  one  never  cut  the  devil  out  of  her  ?"  muttered 
the  miller,  going  back  to  his  work  among  the  beans. 

After  awhile  the  song  ceased;  the  pain  she  suffered 
stifled  her  voice  despite  herself;  she  felt  giddy  and  sick, 
but  she  sat  there  still  in  the  shadow,  holding  on  by  the 
jutting  woodwork,  and  watching  the  water  foam  and 
eddy  below. 

The  hours  went  away ;  the  golden  day  died  ;  the 
grayness  of  evening  stole  the  glow  from  the  gladioli  and 
shut  up  the  buds  of  the  roses ;  the  great  lilies  gleamed 
but  the  whiter  in  the  dimness  of  twilight;  the  vesper 
chimes  were  rung  from  the  cathedral  two  leagues  away 
over  the  fields. 

The  miller  stopped  the  gear  of  the  mill ;  the  grind- 
stones and  the  water-wheels  were  set  at  rest ;  the  peace 
of  the  night  came  down ;  the  pigeons  flew  to  roost  in 
their  niches;  but  the  sacks  still  lay  uncarried  on  the 
grass,  and  a  spider  had  found  time  to  spin  his  fairy  ropes 
about  them. 

The  miller  stood  on  his  threshold,  and  looked  up  at 
her  where  she  sat  aloft  in  the  dusky  shades  of  the  leaves. 

■"  Come  down  and  carry  these  sacks,  little  brute,"  he 
said.     "If  not — no  supper  for  you  to-night." 

Folle-Farine  obeyed  him  and  came  down  from  the 
huge  black  pile  slowly,  her  hands  crossed  behind  her 
back,  her  head  erect,  her  eyes  glancing  like  the  eyes  of 
a  wild  hawk. 

She  walked  straight  past  the  sacks,  across  the  dew- 
laden  turf,  through  the  tufts  of  the  lilies,  and  so  silently 
into  the  house, 


16  F0LLE-FAE1NE. 

The  entrance  was  a  wide  kitchen,  paved  with  blue  and 
white  tiles,  clean  as  a  watercress,  filled  with  the  pun- 
gent odor  of  dried  herbs,  and  furnished  with  brass  pots 
and  pans,  with  walnut  presses,  and  With  pinewood  tres- 
tles, and  with  strange  little  quaint  pictures  and  images  of 
saints.  On  one  of  the  trestles  were  set  a  jug  of  steam- 
ing milk,  some  rolls  of  black  bread,  and  a  big  dish  of 
stewed  cabbages.  At  the  meal  there  was  already  seated 
a  lean,  brown,  wrinkled,  careworn  old  serving-woman, 
clad  in  the  blue-gray  kirtle  and  the  white  head-gear  of 
Normandy. 

The  miller  stayed  the  child  at  the  threshold. 

"Little  devil — not  a  bit  nor  drop  to-night  if  you  do 
not  carry  the  sacks." 

Folle-Farine  said  nothing,  but  moved  on,  past  the  food 
on  the  board,  past  the  images  of  the  saints,  past  the  high 
lancet  window,  through  which  the  moonlight  had  begun 
to  stream,  and  out  at  the  opposite  door. 

There  she  climbed  a  steep  winding  stairway  on  to 
which  that  door  had  opened,  pushed  aside  a  little  wooden 
wicket,  entered  a  loft  in  the  roof,  loosened  the  single  gar- 
ment that  she  wore,  shook  it  off  from  her,  and  plunged 
into  the  fragrant  mass  of  daisied  hay  and  of  dry  orchard 
mosses  which  served  her  as  a  bed.  Covered  in  these, 
and  curled  like  a  dormouse  in  its  nest,  she*clasped  her 
hands  above  her  head  and  sought  to  forget  in  sleep  her 
hunger  and  her  wounds.     She  was  well  used  to  both. 

Below  there  was  a  crucifix,  with  a  bleeding  god  upon 
it ;  there  was  a  little  rudely-sculptured  representation  of 
the  Nativity;  there  was  a  wooden  figure  of  St.  Christo- 
pher ;  a  portrait  of  the  Madonna,  and  many  other  sym- 
bols of  the  church.  But  the  child  went  to  her  bed  with- 
out a  prayer  on  her  lips,  and  with  a  curse  on  her  head 
and  bruises  on  her  body. 

Sleep,  for  once,  would  not  come  to  her.  She  was  too 
hurt  and  sore  to  be  able  to  lie  without  pain  ;  the  dried 
grasses,  so  soft  to  her  usually,  were  like  thorns  beneath 
the  skin  that  still  swelled  and  smarted  from  the  stripes 
of  the  rope.  She  was  feverish ;  she  tossed  and  turned 
in  vain ;  she  suffered  too  much  to  be  still ;  she  sat  up 
and  stared  with  her  passionate  wistful  eyes  at  the  leaves 


FOLLE-FARINE.  It 

that  were  swaying  against  the  square  casement  in  the 
wall,  and  the  moonbeam  that  shone  so  cold  and  bright 
across  her  bed. 

She  listened,  all  her  senses  awake,  to  the  noises  of  the 
house.  They  were  not  many:  a  cat's  mew,  a  mouse's 
scratch,  the  click-clack  of  the  old  woman's  step,  the 
shrill  monotony  of  the  old  man's  voice,  these  were  all. 
After  awhile  even  these  ceased  ;  the  wooden  shoes  clat- 
tered up  the  wooden  stairs,  the  house  became  quite 
still ;  there  was  only  in  the  silence  the  endless  flowing 
murmur  of  the  water  breaking  against  the  motionless 
wheels  of  the  mill. 

Neither  man  nor  woman  had  come  near  to  bring  her 
anything  to  eat  or  drink.  She  had  heard  them  muttering 
their  prayers  before  they  went  to  rest,  but  no  hand  un- 
latched her  door.  She  had  no  disappointment,  because 
she  had  had  no  hope. 

She  had  rebellion,  because  Nature  had  implanted  it  in 
her  ;  but  she  went  no  further.  She  did  not  know  what 
it  was  to  hope.  She  was  only  a  young  wild  animal, 
well  used  to  blows,  and  drilled  by  them,  but  not  tamed. 

As  soon  as  the  place  was  silent,  she  got  out  of  her 
nest  of  grass,  slipped  on  her  linen  skirt,  and  opened  her 
casement — a  small  square  hole  in  the  wall,  and  merely 
closed  by  a  loose  deal  shutter,  with  a  hole  cut  in  it 
scarcely  bigger  than  her  head.  A  delicious  sudden  rush 
of  summer  air  met  her  burning  face  ;  a  cool  cluster  of 
foliage  hit  her  a  soft  blow  across  the  eyes  as  the  wind 
stirred  it.     They  were  enough  to  allure  her. 

Like  any  other  young  cub  of  the  woods,  she  had  only 
two  instincts — air  and  liberty. 

She  thrust  herself  out  of  the  narrow  window  with  the 
agility  that  only  is  born  of  frequent  custom,  and  got  upon 
the  shelving  thatch  of  a  shed  that  sloped  a  foot  or  so  be- 
low, slid  down  the  roof,  and  swung  herself  by  the  jutting 
bricks  of  the  outhouse  wall  on  to  the  grass.  The  house- 
dog, a  brindled  mastiff,  that  roamed  loose  all  night  about 
the  mill,  growled  and  sprang  at  her ;  then,  seeing  who 
she  was,  put  up  his  gaunt  head  and  licked  her  face,  and 
turned  again  to  resume  the  rounds  of  his  vigilant  patrol. 

Ere  he  went,  she  caught  and  kissed  him,  closely  and 
2* 


18  FOLLE-FARINE. 

fervently,  without  a  word.  The  mastiff  was  the  only- 
living  thing  that  did  not  hate  her  ;  she  was  grateful,  in  a 
passionate,  dumb,  unconscious  fashion.  Then  she  took 
to  her  feet,  ran  as  swiftly  as  she  could  along  the  margin 
of  the  water,  and  leaped  like  a  squirrel  into  the  wood,  on 
whose  edge  the  mill-house  stood. 

Once  there  she  was  content. 

The  silence,  the  shadows,  the  darkness  where  the  trees 
stood  thick,  the  pale  quivering  luminance  of  the  moon, 
the  mystical  eerie  sounds  that  fill  a  woodland  by  night, 
all  which  would  have  had  terror  for  tamer  and  happier 
creatures  of  her  years,  had  only  for  her  a  vague  entranced 
delight.  Nature  had  made  her  without  one  pulse  of 
fear;  and  she  had  remained  too  ignorant  to  have  been 
ever  taught  it. 

It  was  still  warm  with  all  the  balmy  breath  of  mid- 
summer ;  there  were  heavy  dews  everywhere  ;  here  and 
there,  on  the  surface  of  the  water,  there  gleamed  the  white 
closed  cups  of  the  lotos ;  through  the  air  there  passed, 
now  and  then,  the  soft,  gray,  dim  body  of  a  night-bird 
on  the  wing;  the  wood,  whose  trees  were  pines,  and 
limes,  and  maples,  was  full  of  a  deep  dreamy  odor ;  the 
mosses  that  clothed  many  of  the  branches  hung,  film- 
like, in  the  wind  in  lovely  coils  and  weblike  fantasies. 

Around  stretched  the  vast  country,  dark  and  silent  as 
in  a  trance,  the  stillness  only  broken  by  some  faint  note 
of  a  sheep's  bell,  some  distant  song  of  a  mule-driver 
passing  homeward. 

The  child  strayed  onward  through  the  trees,  insensibly 
soothed  and  made  glad,  she  knew  not  why,  by  all  the 
dimness  and  the  fragrance  round  her. 

She  stood  up  to  her  knees  in  the  shallow  freshets  that 
every  now  and  then  broke  up  through  the  grasses  ;  she 
felt  the  dews,  shaken  off  the  leaves  above,  fall  deliciously 
upon  her  face  and  hair;  she  filled  her  hands  with  the 
night-blooming  marvel-flower,  and  drank  in  its  sweetness 
as  though  it  were  milk  and  honey ;  she  crouched  down 
and  watched  her  own  eyes  look  back  at  her  from  the  dark 
gliding  water  of  the  river. 

Then  she  threw  herself  on  her  back  upon  the  mosses — 
so  cool  and  moist  that  they  seemed  like  balm  upon  the 


FOLLE-FARINE.  19 

bruised  hot  skin — and  lay  there  looking  upward  at  the 
swift  mute  passage  of  the  flitting  owls,  at  the  stately- 
flight  of  the  broad-winged  moths,  at  the  movement  of 
the  swift  brown  bats,  at  the  soft  trembling  of  the  fo- 
liage in  the  breeze,  at  the  great  clouds  slowly  sailing 
across  the  brightness  of  the  moon.  All  these  things 
were  vaguely  sweet  to  her  —  with  the  sweetness  of 
freedom,  of  love,  of  idleness,  of  rest,  of  all  things 
which  her  life  had  never  known :  so  may  the  young 
large-eyed  antelope  feel  the  beauty  of  the  forest  in  the 
hot  lull  of  tropic  nights,  when  the  speed  of  the  pursuer 
has  relaxed  and  the  aromatic  breath  of  the  panther  is  no 
more  against  its  flank. 

She  lay  there  long,  quite  motionless,  tracing  with  a 
sort  of  voluptuous  delight,  all  movements  in  the  air,  all 
changes  in  the  clouds,  all  shadows  in  the  leaves.  All 
the  immense  multitude  of  ephemeral  life  which,  unheard 
in  the  day,  fills  the  earth  with  innumerable  whispering 
voices  after  the  sun  has  set, -now  stirred  in  every  herb 
and  under  every  bough  around  her.  The  silvery  ghost- 
like wing  of  an  owl  touched  her  forehead  once.  A  little 
dormouse  ran  across  her  feet.  Strange  shapes  floated 
across  the  cold  white  surface  of  the  water.  Quaint 
things,  hairy,  film-winged,  swam  between  her  and  the 
stars.  But  none  of  these  things  had  terror  for  her  ;  they 
were  things  of  the  night,  with  which  she  felt  vaguely  the 
instinct  of  kinship. 

She  was  only  a  little  wild  beast,  they  said,  the  off- 
spring of  darkness,  and  vileness,  and  rage  and  disgrace. 
And  yet,  in  a  vague,  imperfect  way,  the  glories  of  the 
night,  its  mysterious  and  solemn  beauty,  its  melancholy 
and  lustrous  charm,  quenched  the  fierceness  in -her  daunt- 
less eyes,  and  filled  them  with  dim  wondering  tears,  and 
stirred  the  half-dead  soul  in  her  to  some  dull  pain,  some 
nameless  ecstasy,  that  were  not  merely  physical. 

And  then,  in  her  way,  being  stung  by  these,  and 
moved,  she  knew  not  why,  to  a  strange  sad  sense  of  lone- 
liness and  shame,  and  knowing  no  better  she  prayed. 

She  raised  herself  on  her  knees,  and  crossed  her  hands 
upon  her  chest,  and  prayed  after  the  fashion  that  she 
had  seen  men  and  women  and  children  pray  at  roadside 


20  FOLLE-FARINE. 

shrines  and  crosses  ;  prayed  aloud,  with  a  little  beating, 
breaking  heart,  like  the  young  child  she  was. 

"  0  Devil  !  if  I  be  indeed  thy  daughter,  stay  with 
me ;  leave  me  not  alone  :  lend  me  thy  strength  and 
power,  and  let  me  inherit  of  thy  kingdom.  Give  me 
this,  O  great  lord!  and  I  will  praise  thee  and  love  thee 
always." 

She  prayed  in  all  earnestness,  in  all  simplicity,  in 
broken,  faltering  language  ;  knowing  no  better  ;  knowing 
only  that  she  was  alone  on  the  earth  and  friendless,  and 
very  hungry  and  in  sore  pain,  while  this  mighty  un- 
known King  of  the  dominion  of  darkness,  whose  child 
she  ever  heard  she  was,  had  lost  her  or  abandoned  her, 
and  reigned  afar  in  some  great  world,  oblivious  of  her 
misery. 

The  silence  of  the  night  alone  gave  back  the  echo  of 
her  own  voice.  She  waited  breathless  for  some  answer, 
for  some  revelation,  some  reply;  there  only  came  the 
pure  cold  moon,  sailing  straight  from  out  a  cloud  and 
striking  on  the  waters. 

She  rose  sadly  to  her  feet  and  went  back  along  the 
shining  course  of  the  stream,  through  the  grasses  and 
the  mosses  and  under  the  boughs,  to  her  little  nest 
under  the  eaves. 

As  she  left  the  obscurity  of  the  wood  and  passed  into 
the  fuller  light,  her  bare  feet  glistening  and  her  shoul- 
ders wet  with  the  showers  of  dew,  a  large  dark  shape 
flying  down  the  wind  smote  her  with  his  wings  upon  the 
eyes,  lighted  one  moment  on  her  head,  and  then  swept 
onward  lost  in  shade.  At  that  moment,  likewise,  a  ra- 
diant golden  globe  flashed  to  her  sight,  dropped  to  her 
footsteps,  and  shone  an  instant  in  the  glisten  from  the 
skies. 

It  was  but  a  great  goshawk  seeking  for  its  prey ;  it 
was  but  a  great  meteor  fading  and  falling  at  its  due  ap- 
pointed hour ;  but  to  the  heated,  savage,  dreamy  fancy 
of  the  child  it  seemed  an  omen,  an  answer,  a  thing  of 
prophecy,  a  spirit  of  air ;  nay,  why  not  Him  himself  ? 

In  legends,  which  had  been  the  only  lore  her  ears  had 
ever  heard,  it  had  been  often  told  her  that  he  took  such 
shapes  as  this. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  21 

"  If  he  should  give  me  his  kingdom !"  she  thought ; 
and  her  eyes  flashed  alight ;  her  heart  swelled ;  her 
cheeks  burned.  'The  little  dim  untutored  brain  could 
not  hold  the  thought  long  or  close  enough  to  grasp,  or 
sift,  or  measure  it ;  but  some  rude  rich  glory,  impalpable, 
unutterable,  seemed  to  come  to  her  and  bathe  her  in  its 
heat  and  color.  She  was  his  offspring,  so  they  all  told 
her  ;  why  not,  then,  also  his  heir  ? 

She  felt,  as  felt  the  goatherd  or  the  charcoal-burner  in 
those  legends  she  had  fed  on,  w7ho  was  suddenly  called 
from  poverty  and  toil,  from  hunger  and  fatigue,  from  a 
fireless  hearth  and  a  bed  of  leaves,  to  inherit  some  fairy 
empire,  to  ascend  to  some  region  of  the  gods.  Like  one 
of  these,  hearing  the  summons  to  some  great  unknown 
imperial  power  smite  all  his  poor  pale  barren  life  to 
splendor,  so  Folle-Farine,  standing  by  the  water's  side 
in  the  light  of  the  moon,  desolate,  ignorant,  brutelike, 
felt  elected  to  some  mighty  heritage  unseen  of  men. 
If  this  were  waiting  for  her  in  the  future,  what  matter 
now  were  stripes  or  wounds  or  woe  ? 

She  smiled  a  little,  dreamily,  like  one  who  beholds  fair 
visions  in  his  sleep,  and  stole  back  over  the  starlit  grass, 
and  swung  herself  upward  by  the  tendrils  of  ivy,  and 
crouched  once  more  down  in  her  nest  of  mosses. 

And  either  the  courage  of  the  spirits  of  darkness,  or 
the  influence  of  instincts  dumb  but  nascent,  was  with  her, 
for  she  fell  asleep  in  her  little  loft  in  the  roof  as  though 
she  were  a  thing  cherished  of  heaven  and  earth,  and 
dreamed  happily  all  through  the  hours  of  the  slowly- 
rising  dawn :  her  bruised  body  and  her  languid  brain  and 
her  aching  heart  all  stilled  and  soothed,  and  her  hunger 
and  passion  and  pain  forgotten  ;  with  the  night-blooming 
flowers  still  clasped  in  her  hands,  and  on  her  closed  mouth 
a  smile. 

For  she  dreamed  of  her  Father's  Kingdom,  a  kingdom 
which  no  man  denies  to  the  creature  that  has  beauty  and 
youth,  and  is  poor  and  yet  proud,  and  is  of  the  sex  of  its 
mother. 


22  FOLLE-FARINE. 


CHAPTER  II. 

In  one  of  the  most  fertile  and  most  fair  districts  of 
northern  France  there  was  a  little  Norman  town,  very- 
very  old,  and  beautiful  exceedingly  by  reason  of  its  an- 
cient streets,  its  high  peaked  roofs,  its  marvelous  galleries 
and  carvings,  its  exquisite  grays  and  browns,  its  silence 
and  its  color,  and  its  rich  still  life.  Its  center  was  a  great 
cathedral,  noble  as  York  or  Chartres  ;  a  cathedral,  whose 
spire  shot  to  the  clouds,  and  whose  innumerable  towers 
and  pinnacles  were  all  pierced  to  the  day,  so  that  the 
blue  sky  shone  and  the  birds  of  the  air  flew  all  through 
them.  A  slow  brown  river,  broad  enough  for  market- 
boats  and  for  corn-barges,  stole  through  the  place  to  the 
sea,  lapping  as  it  went  the  wooden  piles  of  the  houses, 
and  reflecting  the  quaint  shapes  of  the  carvings,  the  hues 
of  the  signs  and  the  draperies,  the  dark  spaces  of  the 
dormer  windows,  the  bright  heads  of  some  casement- 
cluster  of  carnations,  the  laughing  face  of  a  girl  leaning 
out  to  smile  on  her  lover. 

All  around  it  lay  the  deep  grass  unshaven,  the  leagues 
on  leagues  of  fruitful  orchards,  the  low  blue  hills  ten- 
derly interlacing  one  another,  the  fields  of  colza,  where 
the  white  head-dress  of  the  women  workers  flashed  in 
the  sun  like  a  silvery  pigeon's  wing.  To  the  west  were 
the  deep-green  woods  and  the  wide  plains  golden  with 
gorse  of  Arthur's  and  of  Merlin's  lands ;  and  beyond,  to 
the  northward,  was  the  great  dim  stretch  of  the  ocean 
breaking  on  a  yellow  shore,  whither  the  river  ran,  and 
whither  led  straight  shady  roads,  hidden  with  linden  and 
with  poplar-trees,  and  marked  ever  and  anon  by  a  way- 
side wooden  Christ,  or  by  a  little  murmuring  well  crowned 
with  a  crucifix. 

A  beautiful,  old,  shadowy,  ancient  place:  picturesque 
everywhere ;  often  silent,  with  a  sweet  sad  silence 
that  was  chiefly  broken  by  the  sound  of  bells  or  the 
chanting  of  choristers.  A  place  of  the  Middle  Ages 
still.     With  lanterns  swinging  on  cords  from  house  to 


FOLLE-FARINE.  23 

house  as  the  only  light ;  with  wondrous  scroll-works  and 
quaint  signs  at  the  doors  of  all  its  traders ;  with  monks' 
cowls  and  golden  croziers  and  white-robed  acolytes  in  its 
streets  ;  with  the  subtle  smoke  of  incense  coming  out 
from  the  cathedral  door  to  mingle  with  the  odors  of  the 
fruits  and  flowers  in  the  market-place ;  with  great  flat- 
bottomed  boats  drifting  down  the  river  under  the  leaning 
eaves  of  its  dwellings ;  and  with  the  galleries  of  its  op- 
posing houses  touching  so  nearly  that  a  girl  leaning  in 
one  could  stretch  a  Provence  rose  or  toss  an  Easter-egg 
across  to  her  neighbor  in  the  other. 

Doubtless  there  were  often  squalor,  poverty,  dust,  fil1>h, 
and  uncomeliness  within  these  old  and  beautiful  homes. 
Doubtless  often  the  dwellers  therein  were  housed  like 
cattle  and  slept  like  pigs,  and  looked  but  once  out  to  the 
woods  and  waters  of  the  landscapes  round  for  one  hun- 
dred times  that  they  looked  at  their  hidden  silver  in  an 
old  delf  jug,  or  at  their  tawdry  colored  prints  of  St. 
Yictorian  or  St.  Scasvola. 

But  yet  much  of  the  beauty  and  the  nobility  of  the  old, 
simple,  restful  rich-hued  life  of  the  past  still  abode  there, 
and  remained  with  them.  In  the  straight  lithe  form  of 
their  maidens,  untrammeled  by  modern  garb,  and  moving 
with  the  free  majestic  grace  of  forest  does.  In  the  vast, 
dim,  sculptured  chambers,  where  the  grandam  span  by 
the  wood  fire  and  the  little  children  played  in  the  shadows, 
and  the  lovers  whispered  in  the  embrasured  window. 
In  the  broad  market-place,  where  the  mules  cropped  the 
clover,  and  the  tawny  awnings  caught  the  sunlight,  and 
the  white  caps  of  the  girls  framed  faces  fitted  for  the 
pencils  of  missal  painters,  and  the  wondrous  flush  of 
color  from  mellow  fruits  and  flowers  glanced  amidst  the 
shelter  of  deepest,  freshest  green.  In  the  perpetual  pres- 
ence of  their  cathedral,  which  through  sun  and  storm, 
through  frost  and  summer,  through  noon  and  midnight, 
stood  there  amidst  them,  and  beheld  the  galled  oxen  tread 
their  painful  way,  and  the  scourged  mules  droop  their 
humble  heads,  and  the  helpless  harmless  flocks  go  forth 
to  the  slaughter,  and  the  old  weary  lives  of  the  men  and 
women  pass  through  hunger  and  cold  to  the  grave,  and 
the  sun  and  the  moon  rise  and  set,  and  the  flowers  and 


24  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

the  children  blossom  and  fade,  and  the  endless  years 
come  and  go,  bringing  peace,$  bringing  war ;  bringing 
harvest,  bringing  famine ;  bringing  life,  bringing  death  ; 
and,  beholding  these,  still  said  to  the  multitude  in  its 
terrible  irony,  "  Lo  !  your  God  is  Love." 

This  little  town  lay  far  from  the  great  Paris  highway 
and  all  greatly  frequented  tracks.  It  was  but  a  short  dis- 
tance from  the  coast,  but  near  no  harbor  of  greater  extent 
than  such  as  some  small  fishing  village  had  made  in  the 
rocks  for  the  trawlers.  Few  strangers  ever  came  to  it, 
except  some  wandering  painters  or  antiquaries.  It  sent 
ite  apples  and  eggs,  its  poultry  and  honey,  its  colza  and 
corn,  to  the  use  of  the  great  cities ;  but  it  was  rarely  that 
any  of  its  own  people  went  thither. 

Now  and  then  some  one  of  the  oval-faced,  blue-eyed, 
lithe-limbed  maidens  of  its  little  homely  households 
would  sigh  and  flush  and  grow  restless,  and  murmur 
of  Paris ;  and  would  steal  out  in  the  break  of  a  warm 
gray  morning  whilst  only  the  birds  were  still  waking  ; 
and  would  patter  away  in  her  wooden  shoes  over  the 
broad,  white,  southern  road,  with  a  stick  over  her  shoul- 
der, and  a  bundle  of  all  her  worldly  goods  upon  the  stick. 
And  she  would  look  back  often,  often  as  she  went ;  and 
when  all  was  lost  in  the  blue  haze  of  distance  save  the 
lofty  spire  that  she  still  saw  through  her  tears,  she  would 
say  in  her  heart,  with  her  lips  parched  and  trembling, 
"I  will  come  back  again.     I  will  come  back  again." 

But  none  such  ever  did  come  back. 

They  came  back  no  more  than  did  the  white  sweet 
sheaves  of  the  lilies  that  the  women  gathered  and  sent 
to  be  bought  and  sold  in  the  city — to  gleam  one  faint 
summer  night  in  a  gilded  balcony,  and  to  be  flung  out 
the  next  morning,  withered  and  dead. 

One  among  the  few  who  had  thus  gone  whither  the 
lilies  went,  and  of  whom  the  people  would  still  talk  as 
their  mules  paced  homewards  through  the  lanes  at  twi- 
light, had  been  Heine  Flamma,  the  daughter  of  the  miller 
of  Ypres. 

Ypres  was  a  beechen-wooded  hamlet  on  the  northern 
outskirt  of  the  town,  a  place  of  orchards  and  wooded 
tangle  j  through  which  there  ran  a  branch  of  the  brim- 


FOLLE-FARWE.  25 

ming  river,  hastening  to  seek  and  join  the  sea,  and  caught 
a  moment  on  its  impetuous  way,  and  forced  to  work  by 
the  grim  mill-wheels  that  had  churned  the  foam-bells 
there  for  centuries.  The  mill-house  was  very  ancient; 
its  timbers  were  carved  all  over  into  the  semblance  of 
shields  and  helmets,  and  crosses,  and  fleur-de-lis,  and  its 
frontage  was  of  quaint  pargeted  work,  black  and  white, 
except  where  the  old  blazonries  had  been. 

It  had  been  handed  down  from  sire  to  son  of  the  same 
race  through  many  generations — a  race  hard,  keen,  un- 
learned, superstitious,  and  caustic-tongued — a  race  wedded 
to  old  ways,  credulous  of  legend,  chaste  of  life,  cruel  of 
judgment;  harshly  strong,  yet  ignorantly  weak;  a  race 
holding  dearer  its  heir-loom  of  loveless,  joyless,  bigoted 
virtue  even  than  those  gold  and  silver  pieces  which  had 
ever  been  its  passion,  hidden  away  in  earthen  pipkins 
under  old  apple-roots,  or  in  the  crannies  of  wall  timber, 
or  in  secret  nooks  of  oaken  cupboards. 

Claudis  Flamma,  the  last  of  this  toilsome,  God-fearing, 
man-begrudging,  Norman  stock,  was  true  to  the  type  and 
the  traditions  of  his  people. 

He  was  too  ignorant  even  to  read  ;  but  priests  do  not 
deem  this  a  fault.  He  was  avaricious;  but  many  will 
honor  a  miser  quicker  than  a  spendthrift.  He  was  cruel ; 
but  in  the  market-place  he  always  took  heed  to  give  his 
mare  a  full  feed,  so  that  if  she  were  pinched  of  her  hay 
in  her  stall  at  hfmie  none  were  the  wiser,  for  she  ha'd  no 
language  but  that  of  her  wistful  black  eyes ;  and  this  is 
a  speech  to  which  men  stay  but  little  to  listen.  The 
shrewd,  old  bitter-tongued,  stern-living  man  was  feared 
and  respected  with  the  respect  that  fear  begets;  and  in 
truth  he  had  a  rigid  virtue  in  his  way,  and  was  proud  of 
it,  with  scorn  for  those  who  found  it  hard  to  walk  less 
straightly  and  less  circumspectly  than  himself. 

He  married  late ;  his  wife  died  in  childbirth ;  his 
daughter  grew  into  the  perfection  of  womanhood  under 
the  cold,  hard,  narrow  rule  of  his  severity  and  his  super- 
stition. He  loved  her,  indeed,  with  as  much  love  as  it 
was  possible  for  him  ever  to  feel,  and  was  proud  of  her 
beyond  all  other  things;  saved  for  her,  toiled  for  her, 
muttered  ever  that  it  was  for  her  when  at  confession 

3 


26  FOLLE-FARINE. 

he  related  how  his  measures  of  flour  had  been  falsely- 
weighted,  and  how  he  had  niched  from  the  corn  brought 
by  the  widow  and  the  fatherless.  For  her  he  had  sinned  : 
from  one  to  whom  the  good  report  of  his  neighbors  and 
the  respect  of  his  own  conscience  were  as  the  very 
breath  of  life,  it  was  the  strongest  proof  of  love  that  he 
could  give.  But  this  love  never  gleamed  one  instant  in 
his  small  sharp  gray  eyes,  nor  escaped  ever  by  a  single 
utterance  from  his  lips.  Reprimand,  or  homily,  or  cynical 
rasping  sarcasm,  was  all  that  she  ever  heard  from  him. 
She  believed  that  he  despised,  and  almost  hated  her;  he 
held  it  well  for  women  to  be  tutored  in  subjection  and  in 
trembling. 

At  twenty-two  Eeine  Flamma  was  the  most  beautiful 
woman  in  Calvados,  and  the  most  wretched. 

She  was  straight  as  a  pine  ;  cold  as  snow  ;  graceful  as 
a  stem  of  wheat :  lovely  and  silent ;  with  a  mute  proud 
face,  in  which  the  great  blue  eyes  alone  glowed  with  a 
strange,  repressed,  speechless  passion  and  wishfulness. 
Her  life  was  simple,  pure,  chaste,  blameless,  as  the  lives 
of  the  many  women  of  her  race  who,  before  her,  had 
lived  and  died  in  the  shadow  of  that  water-fed  wood  had 
always  been.  Her  father  rebuked  and  girded  at  her, 
continually  dreaming  that  he  could  paint  whiter  even  the 
spotlessness  of  this  lily,  refine  even  the  purity  of  this 
virgin  gold. 

She  never  answered  him  anything,  »or  in  anything 
contradicted  his  will ;  not  one  among  all  the  youths  and 
maidens  of  her  birthplace  had  ever  heard  so  much  as  a 
murmur  of  rebellion  from  her ;  and  the  priests  said  that 
such  a  life  as  this  would  be  fitter  for  the  cloister  than  the 
marriage-bed.  None  of  them  ever  read  the  warning  that 
these  dark-blue  slumbering  eyes  would  have  given  to  any 
who  should  have  had  the  skill  to  construe  them  right. 
There  were  none  of  such  skill  there  ;  and  so,  she  holding 
her  peace,  the  men  and  women  noted  her  ever  with  a 
curious  dumb  reverence,  and  said  among  themselves  that 
the  race  of  Flamma  would  die  well  and  nobly  in  her. 

"A  saint !"  said  the  good  old  gentle  bishop  of  the  dis- 
trict, as  he  blessed  her  one  summer  evening  in  her  father's 
house,  and  rode  his  mule  slowly  through  the  pleasant  pop- 


F0LLE-FAR1NE.  21 

lar  lanes  and  breeze-blown  fields  of  colza  back  to  his  little 
quiet  homestead,  where  he  tended  his  own  cabbages  and 
garnered  his  own  honey. 

Reine  Flamma  bowed  her  tall  head  meekly,  and  took 
his  benediction  in  silence. 

The  morning  after,  the  miller,  rising,  as  his  custom  was, 
at  daybreak,  and  reciting  his  paternosters,  thanked  the 
Mother  of  the  World  that  she  had  given  him  thus  strength 
and  power  to  rear  up  his  motherless  daughter  in  purity 
and  peace.  Then  he  dressed  himself  in  his  gray  patched 
blouse,  groped  his  way  down  the  narrow  stair,  and  went 
in  his  daily  habit  to  undraw  the  bolts  and  unloose  the 
chains  of  his  dwelling. 

There  was  no  need  that  morning  for  him ;  the  bolts 
were  already  back ;  the  house-door  stood  wide  open ;  on 
the  threshold  a  brown  hen  perched  pluming  herself  ;  there 
were  the  ticking  of  the  clock,  the  chirming  of  the  birds, 
the  rushing  of  the  water,  these  were  the  only  sounds 
upon  the  silence. 

He  called  his  daughter's  name  :  there  was  no  answer. 
He  mounted  to  her  chamber:  it  had  no  tenant.  He 
searched  hither  and  thither,  in  the  house,  and  the  stable, 
and  the  granary:  in  the  mill,  and  the  garden,  and  the 
wood  ;  he  shouted,  he  ran,  he  roused  his  neighbors,  he 
looked  in  every  likely  and  unlikely  place  :  there  was  no 
reply. 

There  was  only  the  howl  of  the  watch-dog,  who  sat 
with  his  face  to  the  south  and  mourned  unceasingly. 

And  from  that  day  neither  he  nor  any  man  living  there 
ever  heard  again  of  Reine  Flamma. 

Some  indeed  did  notice  that  at  the  same  time  there 
disappeared  from  the  town  one  who  had  been  there 
through  all  that  spring  and  summer.  One  who  had 
lived  strangely,  and  been  clad  in  an  odd  rich  fashion, 
and  had  been  whispered  as  an  Eastern  prince  by  reason 
of  his  scattered  gold,  his  unfamiliar  tongue,  his  black- 
browed,  star-eyed,  deep-hued  beauty,  like  the  beauty  of 
the  passion-flower.  But  none  had  ever  seen  this  stranger 
aud  Reine  Flamma  in  each  other's  presence ;  and  the 
rumor  was  discredited  as  a  foulness  absurd  and  unseemly 
to  be  said  of  a  woman  whom  their  bishop  had  called  a 


28  FOLLE-FARINE. 

saint.  So  it  died  out,  breathed  only  by  a  few  mouths, 
and  it  came  to  be  accepted  as  a  fact  that  she  must  have 
perished  in  the  deep  fast-flowing  river  by  some  false  step 
on  the  mill-timber,  as  she  went  at  dawn  to  feed  her  doves, 
or  by  some  strange  sad  trance  of  sleep-walking,  from 
which  she  had  been  known  more  than  once  to  suffer. 

Claudis  Flamma  said  little  ;  it  was  a  wound  that  bled 
inwardly.  He  toiled,  and  chaffered,  and  drove  hard  bar- 
gains, and  worked  early  and  late  with  his  hireling,  and 
took  for  the  household  service  an  old  Norman  peasant 
woman  more  aged  than  himself,  and  told  no  man  that  he 
suffered.  All  that  he  ever  said  was,  "  She  was  a  saint: 
God  took  her;"  and  in  his  martyrdom  he  found  a  hard 
pride  and  a  dull  consolation. 

It  was  no  mere  metaphoric  form  of  words  with  him. 
He  believed  in  miracles  and  all  manner  of  divine  inter- 
position, and  he  believed  likewise  that  she,  his  angel, 
being  too  pure  for  earth,  had  been  taken  by  God's  own 
hand  up  to  the  bosom  of  Mary  ;  and  this  honor  which  had 
befalleu  his  first-begotten  shed  a  sanctity  and  splendor 
on  his  cheerless  days ;  and  when  the  little  children  and 
the  women  saw  him  pass,  they  cleared  from  his  way  as 
from  a  prince's,  and  crossed  themselves  as  they  changed 
words  with  one  whose  daughter  was  the  bride  of  Christ. 

So  six  years  passed  away ;  and  the  name  of  Reine 
Flamma  was  almost  forgotten,  but  embalmed  in  memo- 
ries of  religious  sanctity,  as  the  dead  heart  of  a  saint  is 
imbedded  in  amber  and  myrrh. 

At  the  close  of  the  sixth  year  there  happened  what 
many  said  was  a  thing  devil-conceived  and  wrought  out 
by  the  devil  to  the  shame  of  a  pure  name,  and  to  the 
hinderance  of  the  people  of  God. 

Oue  winter's  night  Claudis  Flamma  was  seated  in  his 
kitchen,  having  recently  ridden  home  his  mare  from  the 
market  in  the  town.  The  fire  burned  in  ancient  fashion 
on  the  hearth,  and  it  was  so  bitter  without  that  even  his 
parsimonious  habits  had  relaxed,  and  he  had  piled  some 
wood,  liberally  mingled  with  dry  moss,  that  cracked,  and 
glowed,  and  shot  flame  up  the  wide  black  shaft  of  the 
chimney.  The  day's  work  was  over;  the  old  woman- 
servant  sat  spinning  flax  on  the  other  side  of  the  fire; 


FOLLE-FARINE.  29 

the  great  mastiff  was  stretched  sleeping  quietly  on  the 
brick  floor;  the  blue  pottery,  the  brass  pans,  the  oaken 
presses  that  had  been  the  riches  of  his  race  for  genera- 
tions, glimmered  in  the  light ;  the  doors  were  barred,  the 
shutters  closed ;  around  the  house  the  winds  howled,  and 
beneath  its  walls  the  fretting  water  hissed. 

The  miller,  overcome  with  the  past  cold  and  present 
warmth,  nodded  in  his  wooden  settle  and  slept,  and  mut- 
tered dreamily  in  his  sleep,  "A  saint — a  saint  I — God 
took  her." 

The  old  woman,  hearing,  looked  across  at  him,  and  shook 
her  head,  and  went  on  with  her  spinning  with  lips  that 
moved  inaudibly :  she  had  been  wont  to  say,  out  of  her 
taskmaster's  hearing,  that  no  woman  who  was  beautiful 
ever  was  a  saint  as  well.  And  some  thought  that  this  old 
creature,  Marie  Pitchou,  who  used  to  live  in  a  miserable 
hut  on  the  other  side  of  the  wood,  had  known  more 
than  she  had  chosen  to  tell  of  the  true  fate  of  Heine 
Flamma. 

Suddenly  a  blow  on  the  panels  of  the  door  sounded 
through  the  silence.  The  miller,  awakened  in  a  moment, 
started  to  his  feet  and  grasped  his  ash  staff  with  one  hand, 
and  with  the  other  the  oil-lamp  burning  on  the  trestle. 
The  watch-dog  arose,  but  made  no  hostile  sound. 

A  step  crushed  the  dead  leaves  without  and  passed 
away  faintly ;  there  was  stillness  again ;  the  mastiff  went 
to  the  bolted  door,  smelt  beneath  it,  and  scratched  at  the 
panels. 

On  the  silence  there  sounded  a  small,  timid,  feeble  beat- 
ing on  the  wood  from  without ;  such  a  slight  fluttering 
noise  as  a  wounded  bird  might  make  in  striving  to  rise. 

"  It  is  nothing  evil,"  muttered  Flamma.  "  If  it  were 
evil  the  beast  would  not  want  to  have  the  door  opened. 
It  may  be  some  one  sick  or  stray." 

All  this  time  he  was  in  a  manner  charitable,  often  con- 
quering the  niggardly  instincts  of  his  character  to  try 
and  save  his  soul  by  serving  the  wretched.  He  was  a 
miser,  and  he  loved  to  gain,  and  loathed  to  give ;  but 
since  his  daughter  had  been  taken  to  the  saints  he  had 
striven  with  all  his  might  to  do  good  enough  to  be  taken 
likewise  to  that  heavenlv  rest. 

3* 


30  FOLLE-FARINE. 

Any  crust  bestowed  on'  the  starveling,  any  bed  of  straw- 
afforded  to  the  tramp,  caused  him  a  sharp  pang ;  but 
since  his  daughter  had  been  taken  he  had  tried  to  please 
God  by  this  mortification  of  his  own  avarice  and  diminu- 
tion of  his  own  gains.  He  could  not  vanquish  the  na- 
ture that  was  ingrained  in  him.  He  would  rob  the  widow 
of  an  ephah  of  wheat,  and  leave  his  mare  famished  in  her 
stall,  because  it  was  his  nature  to  find  in  all  such  saving 
a  sweet  savor ;  but  he  would  not  turn  away  a  beggar  or 
refuse  a  crust  to  a  wayfarer,  lest,  thus  refusing,  he  might 
turn  away  from  him  an  angel  unawares. 

The  mastiff  scratched  still  at  the  panels;  the  sound 
outside  had  ceased. 

The  miller,  setting  the  lamp  down  on  the  floor,  gripped 
more  firmly  the  ashen  stick,  undrew  the  bolts,  turned  the 
stout  key,  and  opened  the  door  slowly,  and  with  caution. 
A  loud  gust  of  wind  blew  dead  leaves  against  his  face  ; 
a  blinding  spray  of  snow  scattered  itself  over  his  bent 
stretching  form.  In  the  darkness  without,  whitened  from 
head  to  foot,  there  stood  a  little  child. 

The  dog  went  up  to  her  and  licked  her  face  with  kindly 
welcome.  Claudis  Flamma  drew  her  with  a  rough  grasp 
across  the  threshold,  and  went  out  into  the  air  to  find 
whose  footsteps  had  been  those  which  had  trodden  heav- 
ily away  after  the  first  knock.  The  snow,  however,  was 
falling  fast ;  it  was  a  cloudy  moonless  night.  He  did 
not  dare  to  go  many  yards  from  his  own  portals,  lest  he 
should  fall  into  some  ambush  set  by  robbers.  The  mas- 
tiff too  was  quiet,  which  indicated  that  there  was  no  dan- 
ger near,  so  the  old  man  returned,  closed  the  door  care- 
fully, drew  the  bolts  into  their  places,  and  came  towards 
the  child,  whom  the  woman  Pitchou  had  drawn  towards 
the  fire. 

She  was  a  child  of  four  or  five  years  old ;  huddled 
in  coarse  linen  and  in  a  little  red  garment  of  fox's  skin, 
and  blanched  from  head  to  foot,  for  the  flakes  were  frozen 
on  her  and  on  the  little  hood  that  covered,  gypsy-like,  her 
curls.  It  was  a  strange,  little,  ice-cold,  ghostlike  figure, 
but  out  of  this  mass  of  icicles  and  whiteness  there  glowed 
great  beaming  frightened  eyes  and  a  mouth  like  a  scarlet 
berry ;  the  radiance  and  the  contrast  of  it  were  like  the 


FOLLE-FARINE.  31 

glow  of  holly  fruit  thrust  out  from  a  pile  of  drifted 
snow. 

The  miller  shook  her  by  the  shoulder. 

"  Who  brought  you  ?" 

"  Phratos,"  answered  the  child,  with  a  stifled  sob  in 
her  throat. 

"And  who  is  that?" 

"  Phratos,"  answered  the  child  again. 

"  Is  that  a  man  or  a  woman  ?" 

The  child  made  no  reply;  she  seemed  not  to  compre- 
hend his  meaning.  The  miller  shook  her  again,  and  some 
drops  of  water  fell  from  the  ice  that  was  dissolving  in 
the  warmth. 

"  Why  are  you  come  here  ?"  he  asked,  impatiently. 

She  shook  her  head,  as  though  to  say  none  knew  so 
little  of  herself  as  she. 

"You  must  have  a  name,"  he  pursued  harshly  and  in 
perplexity.     "  What  are  you  called  ?     Who  are  you  ?" 

The  child  suddenly  raised  her  great  eyes  that  had  been 
fastened  on  the  leaping  flames,  and  flashed  them  upon  his 
in  a  terror  of  bewildered  ignorance — the  piteous  terror 
of  a  stray  dog. 

"  Phratos,"  she  cried  once  more,  and  the  cry  now  was 
half  a  sigh,  half  a  shriek. 

Something  in  that  regard  pierced  him  and  startled 
him ;  he  dropped  his  hand  off  her  shoulder,  and  breathed 
quickly;  the  old  woman  gave  a  low  cry,  and  staring 
with  all  her  might  at  the  child's  small,  dark,  fierce,  lovely 
face,  fell  to  counting  her  wooden  beads  and  mumbling 
many  prayers. 

0  Claudis  Flamma  turned  savagely  on  her  as  if  stung  by 
some  unseen  snake,  and  willing  to  wreak  his  vengeance 
on  the  nearest  thing  that  was  at  hand. 

"  Fool!  cease  your  prating !"  he  muttered,  with  a  brutal 
oath.  "  Take  the  animal  and  search  her.  Bring  me 
what  you  find." 

Then  he  sat  down  on  the  stool  by  the  fire,  and  braced 
his  lips  tightly,  and  locked  his  bony  hands  upon  his 
knees.  He  knew  what  blow  awaited  him;  he  was  no 
coward,  and  he  had  manhood  enough  in  him  to  press  any 
iron  into  his  soul  and  tell  none  that  it  hurt  him. 


32  FOLLE-FARINE. 

The  old  woman  drew  the  child  aside  to  a  dusky  corner 
of  the  chamber,  and  began  to  despoil  her  of  her  cover- 
ings. The  creature  did  not  resist ;  the  freezing  cold  and 
long  fatigue  had  numbed  and  silenced  her ;  her  eyelids 
were  heavy  with  the  sleep  such  cold  produces,  and  she 
had  not  strength,  because  she  had  not  consciousness 
enough,  to  oppose  whatsoever  they  might  choose  to  do 
to  her.  Only  now  and  then  her  eyes  opened,  as  they 
had  opened  on  him,  with  a  sudden  luster  and  fierceness, 
like  those  in  a  netted  animal's  impatient  but  untamed 
regard. 

Pitchou  seized  and  searched  her  eagerly,  stripping  her 
of  her  warm  fox-skin  wrap,  her  scarlet  hood  of  wool,  her 
little  rough  hempen  shirt,  which  were  all  dripping  with 
the  water  from  the  melted  snow. 

The  skin  of  the  child  was  brown,  with  a  golden  bloom 
on  it ;  it  had  been  tanned  by  hot  suns,  but  it  was  soft  as 
silk  in  texture,  and  transparent,  showing  the  course  of 
each  blue  vein.  Her  limbs  were  not  well  nourished,  but 
they  were  of  perfect  shape  and  delicate  bone ;  and  the 
feet  were  the  long,  arched,  slender  feet  of  the  southern 
side  of  the  Pyrenees. 

She  allowed  herself  to  be  stripped  and  wrapped  in  a 
coarse  piece  of  homespun  linen  ;  she  was  still  half  frozen, 
and  in  a  state  of  stupor,  either  from  amazement  or  from 
fear.  She  was  quite  passive,  and  she  never  spoke.  Her 
apathy  deceived  the  old  crone,  who  took  it  for  docility, 
and  who,  trusting  to  it,  proceeded  to  take  advantage  of 
it,  after  the  manner  of  her  kind.  About  the  child's  head 
there  hung  a  little  band  of  glittering  coins ;  they  were 
not  gold,  but  the  woman  Pitchou  thought  they  were,  and 
seized  them  with  gloating  hands  and  ravenous  eyes. 

The  child  started  from  her  torpor,  shook  herself  free, 
and  fought  to  guard  them — fiercely,  with  tooth  and  nail, 
as  the  young  fox  whose  skin  she  had  worn  might  have 
fought  for  its  dear  life.  The  old  woman  on  her  side 
strove  as  resolutely ;  long  curls  of  the  child's  hair  were 
clutched  out  in  the  struggle  ;  she  did  not  wince  or  scream, 
but  she  fought — fought  with  all  the  breath  and  the  blood 
that  were  in  her  tiny  body. 

She  was  no  match,  with  all  her  ferocity  and  fury,  for 


FOLLE-FARINE.  33 

the  sinewy  grip  of  the  old  peasant ;  and  the  coins  were 
torn  off  her  forehead  and  hidden  away  in  a  hole  in  the 
wood,  out  of  her  sight,  where  the  old  peasant  hoarded 
all  her  precious  treasures  of  copper  coins  and  other  trifles 
that  she  managed  to  secrete  from  her  master's  all-seeing 
eyes. 

They  were  little  Oriental  sequins  engraved  with  Arabic 
characters,  chained  together  after  the  Eastern  fashion. 
To  Pitchou  they  looked  a  diadem  of  gold  worthy  of  *an 
empress.  The  child  watched  them  removed  in  perfect 
silence  ;  from  the  moment  they  had  been  wrenched  away, 
and  the  battle  had  been  finally  lost  to  her,  she  had  ceased 
to  struggle,  as  though  disdainful  of  a  fruitless  contest. 
But  a  great  hate  gathered  in  her  eyes,  and  smouldered 
there  like  a  half-stifled  fire — it  burned  on  and  on  for  many 
a  long  year  afterwards,  unquenched. 

When  Pitchou  brought  her  a  cup  of  water,  and  a  roll 
of  bread,  she  would  neither  eat  nor  drink,  but  turned  her 
face  to  the  wall, — mute. 

M  Those  are  just  her  father's  eyes,"  the  old  woman 
muttered.  She  had  seen  them  burn  in  the  gloom  of  the 
evening  through  the  orchard  trees,  as  the  stars  rose, 
and  as  Reine  Flamma  listened  to  the  voice  that  wooed 
her  to  her  destruction. 

She  let  the  child  be,  and  searched  her  soaked  garments 
for  any  written  word  or  any  token  that  might  be  on  them. 
Fastened  roughly  to  the  fox's  skin  there  was  a  faded 
letter.  Pitchou  could  not  read  ;  she  took  it  to  her 
master. 

Claudis  Flamma  grasped  the  paper  and  turned  its 
superscription  to  the  light  of  the  lamp. 

He  likewise  could  not  read,  yet  at  sight  of  the  char- 
acters his  tough  frame  trembled,  and  his  withered 
skin  grew  red  with  a  sickly,  feverish  quickening  of  the 
blood.  He  knew  them.  Once,  in  a  time  long  dead,  he 
had  been  proud  of  those  slender  letters  that  had  been  so 
far  niore  legible  than  any  that  the  women  of  her  class 
could  pen,  and  on  beholding  which  the  good  bishop  had 
smiled,  and  passed  a  pleasant  word  concerning  her  being 
almost  fitted  to  be  his  own  clerk  and  scribe.  For  a  mo- 
ment, watching  those  written  ciphers  that  had  no  tongue 


34  FOLLE-FARINE. 

for  him,  and  yet  seemed  to  tell  their  tale  so  that  they 
scorched  and  withered  up  all  the  fair  honor  and  pious 
peace  of  his  old  age,  a  sudden  faintness,  a  sudden  swoon- 
ing sense  seized  him  for  the  first  time  in  all  his  life  ;  his 
limbs  failed  him,  he  sank  down  on  his  seat  again,  he  gasped 
for  breath ;  he  needed  not  to  be  told  anything,  he  knew 
all.  He  knew  that  the  creature,  whom  he  had  believed 
so  pure  that  God  had  deemed  the  earth  unworthy  of  her 
yd*uth,  was 

His  throat  rattled,  his  lips  were  covered  with  foam, 
his  ears  were  filled  with  a  rushing  hollow  sound,  like  the 
roaring  of  his  own  mill-waters  in  a  time  of  storm.  All 
at  once  he  started  to  his  feet,  and  glared  at  the  empty 
space  of  the  dim  chamber,  and  struck  his  hands  wildly 
together  in  the  air,  and  cried  aloud : 

"  She  was  a  saint,  I  said — a  saint !  A  saint  in  body 
and  soul !  And  I  thought  that  God  begrudged  her,  and 
held  her  too  pure  for  man  I" 

And  he  laughed  aloud — thrice. 

The  child  hearing,  and  heavy  with  sleep,  and  eagerly 
desiring  warmth,  as  a  little  frozen  beast  that  coils  itself 
in  snow  to  slumber  into  death,  startled  by  that  horrible 
mirth,  came  forward. 

The  serge  fell  off  her  as  she  moved.  Her  little  naked 
limbs  glimmered  like  gold  in  the  dusky  light ;  her  hair 
was  as  a  cloud  behind  her ;  her  little  scarlet  mouth  was 
half  open,  like  the'  mouth  of  a  child  seeking  its  mother's 
kiss ;  her  great  eyes,  dazzled  by  the  flame,  flashed  and 
burned  and  shone  like  stars.  They  had  seen  the  same 
face  ere  then  in  Calvados. 

She  came  straight  to  Claudis  Flamma  as  though  drawn 
by  that  awful  and  discordant  laughter,  and  by  that  leap- 
ing ruddy  flame  upon  the  hearth,  and  she  stretched  out 
her  arms  and  murmured  a  word  and  smiled,  a  little 
dreamily,  seeking  to  sleep,  asking  to  be  caressed,  desiring 
she  knew  not  what. 

He  clinched  his  fist,  and  struck  her  to  the  ground. 
She  fell  without  a  sound.  The  blood  flowed  from  her 
mouth. 

He  looked  at  her  where  she  lay,  and  laughed  once 
more. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  35 

"  She  was  a  saint ! — a  saint !  And  the  devil  begot  in 
her  that /v 

Then  he  went  out  across  the  threshold  and  into  the 
night,  with  the  letter  still  clinched  in  his  hand. 

The  snow  fell,  the  storm  raged,  the  earth  was  covered 
with  ice  and  water  ;  he  took  no  heed,  but  passed  through 
it,  his  head  bare  and  his  eyes  blind. 

The*  dog  let  him  go  forth  alone,  and  waited  by  the 
child. 


CHAPTER   III. 

All  night  long  he  was  absent. 

The  old  serving-woman,  terrified,  in  so  far  as  her  dull 
brutish  nature  could  be  roused  to  fear,  did  what  she 
knew,  what  she  dared.  She  raised  the  little  wounded 
naked  creature,  and  carried  her  to  her  own  pallet  bed ; 
restored  her  to  consciousness  by  such  rude  means  as  she 
had  knowledge  of,  and  stanched  the  flow  of  blood.  She 
did  all  this  harshly,  as  it  was  her  custom  to  do  all  things, 
and  without  tenderness  or  even  pity,  for  the  sight  of  this 
stranger  was  unwelcome  to  her,  and  she  also  had  guessed 
the  message  of  that  unread  letter. 

The  child  had  been  stunned  by  the  blow,  and  she  had 
lost  some  blood,  and  was  weakened  and  stupefied  and 
dazed  ;  yet  there  seemed  to  her  rough  nurse  no  peril  for 
her  life,  and  by  degrees  she  fell  into  a  feverish,  tossing 
slumber,  sobbing  sometimes  in  her  sleep,  and  crying 
perpetually  on  the  unknown  name  of  Phratos. 

The  old  woman  Pitchou  stood  and  looked  at  her.  She 
who  had  always  known  the  true  story  of  that  disappear- 
ance which  some  had  called  death  and  some  had  deemed 
a  divine  interposition,  had  seen  before  that  transparent 
brown  skin,  those  hues  in  cheeks  and  lips  like  the  carna- 
tion leaves,  that  rich,  sunfed,  dusky  beauty,  those  straight 
dark  brows. 

"  She  is  his  sure  enough,"  she  muttered.     "  He  was 


36  FOLLE-FARINE. 

the  first  with  Heine  Flamma.  I  wonder  has  he  been  the 
last." 

And  she  went  down  the  stairs  chuckling,  as  the  low 
human  brute  will  at  any  evil  thought. 

The  mastiff  stayed  beside  the  child. 

She  went  to  the  fire  and  threw  more  wood  on,  and  sat 
down  again  to  her  spinning-wheel,  and  span  and  dozed, 
and  span  and  dozed  again. 

She  was  not  curious:  to  her,  possessing  that  thread  to 
the  secret  of  the  past  which  her  master  and  her  town- 
folk  had  never  held,  it  all  seemed  natural.  It  was  an 
old,  old  story ;  there  had  been  thousands  like  it ;  it 
was  only  strange  because  Heine  Flamma  had  been  held 
a  saint. 

The  hours  passed  on ;  the  lamp  paled,  and  its  flame  at 
last  died  out;  in  the  loft  above,  where  the  dog  watched, 
there  was  no  sound ;  the  old  woman  slumbered  undis- 
turbed, unless  some  falling  ember  of  the  wood  aroused 
her. 

She  was  not  curious,  nor  did  she  care  how  the  child 
fared.  She  had  led  that  deadening  life  of  perpetual  la- 
bor and  of  perpetual  want  in  which  the  human  animal  be- 
comes either  a  machine  or  a  devil.  She  was  a  machine ; 
put  to  what  use  she  might  be — to  spin  flax,  to  card  wool, 
to  wring  a  pigeon's  throat,  to  bleed  a  calf  to  death,  to 
bake  or  stew,  to  mumble  a  prayer,  or  drown  a  kitten,  it 
was  all  one  to  her.  If  she  had  a  preference,  it  might  be 
for  the  office  that  hurt  some  living  thing  ;  but  she  did  not 
care :  all  she  heeded  was  whether  she  had  pottage  enough 
to  eat  at  noonday,  and  the  leaden  effigy  of  her  Mary  safe 
around  her  throat  at  night. 

The  night  went  on,  and  passed  away:  one  gleam  of 
dawn  shone  through  a  round  hole  in  the  shutter;  she 
wakened  with  a  start  to  find  the  sun  arisen,  and  the  fire 
dead  upon  the  hearth. 

She  shook  herself  and  stamped  her  chill  feet  upon  the 
bricks,  and  tottered  on  her  feeble  way,  with  frozen  body, 
to  the  house-door.  She  drew  it  slowly  open,  and  saw  by 
the  light  of  the  sun  that  it  had  been  for  some  time  morning. 

The  earth  was  everywhere  thick  with  snow;  a  hoar 
frost  sparkled  over  all  the  branches ;  great  sheets  of  ice 


FOLLE-FARWE.  37 

were  whirled  down  the  rapid  mill-stream  ;  in  one  of  the 
leafless  boughs  a  robin  sang,  and  beneath  the  bough  a 
cat  was  crouched,  waiting  with  hungry  eager  eyes,  pa- 
tient even  in  its  famished  impatience. 

Dull  as  her  sympathy  was,  and  slow  her  mind,  she 
started  as  she  saw  her  master  there. 

Claudis  Flamma  was  at  work;  the  rough,  hard,  rude 
toil,  which  he  spared  to  himself  no  more  than  to  those 
who  were  his  hirelings.  He  was  carting  wood  ;  going 
to  and  fro  with  huge  limbs  of  trees  that  men  in  youth 
would  have  found  it  a  severe  task  to  move  ;  he  was  labor- 
ing breathlessly,  giving  himself  no  pause,  and  the  sweat 
was  on  his  brow,  although  he  trod  ankle  deep  in  snow, 
and  although  his  clothes  were  heavy  with  icicles. 

He  did  not  see  or  hear  her;  she  went  up  to  him  and 
called  him  by  his  name ;  he  started,  and  raised  his  head 
and  looked  at  her. 

Dull  though  she  was,  she  was  in  a  manner  frightened 
by  the  change  upon  his  face;  it  had  been  lean,  furrowed, 
weather-beaten  always,  but  it  was  livid  now,  with  blood- 
shot eyes,  and  a  bruised,  broken,  yet  withal  savage  look 
that  terrified  her.  He  did  not  speak,  but  gazed. at  her 
like  a  man  recalled  from  some  drugged  sleep  back  to  the 
deeds  and  memories  of  the  living  world. 

The  old  woman  held  her  peace  a  few  moments;  then 
spoke  out  in  her  old  blunt,  dogged  fashion, — 

"  Is  she  to  stay  ?" 

Her  mind  was  not  awake  enough  for  any  curiosity ;  she 
only  cared  to  know  if  the  child  stayed :  only  so  much  as 
would  concern  her  soup-kettle,  her  kneaded  dough,  her 
spun  hemp,  her  household  labor. 

He  turned  for  a  second  with  the  gesture  that  a  trapped 
fox  may  make,  held  fast,  yet  striving  to  essay  a  death- 
grip  ;  then  he  checked  himself,  and  gave  a  mute  sign  of 
assent,  and  heaved  up  a  fresh  log  of  wood,  and  went  on 
with  his  labors,  silently.  She  knew  of  old  his  ways  too 
well  to  venture  to  ask  more.  She  knew,  too,  that  when 
he  worked  like  this,  fasting  and  in  silence,  there  had  been 
long  and  fierce  warfare  in  his  soul,  and  some  great  evil 
done  for  which  he  sought  to  make  atonement. 

So  she  left  him,  and  passed  in  to  the  house,  and  built 
4 


♦ 


38  FOLLE-FARINE. 

up  afresh  her  fire,  and  swept  her  chamber  out,  and  fast- 
ened* up  her  round  black  pot  to  boil,  and  muttered  all  the 
while, — 

**  Another  mouth  to  feed  ;  another  beast  to  tend." 

And  the  thing  was  bitter  to  her  ;  because  it  gave  trouble 
and  took  food. 

Now,  what  the  letter  had  been,  or  who  had  deciphered 
it  for  him,  Claudis  Flamma  never  told  to  any  man ;  and 
from  the  little  strange  creature  no  utterance  could  be  ever 
got. 

But  the  child  who  had  come  in  the  night  and  the  snow 
tarried  at  Ypres  from  that  time  thenceforward. 

Claudis  Flamma  nourished,  sheltered,  clothed  her ;  but 
he  did  all  these  begrudgingly,  harshly,  scantily ;  and  he 
did  all  these  with  an  acrid  hate  and  scorn,  which  did  not 
cease  but  rather  grew  with  time. 

The  blow  which  had  been  her  earliest  welcome  was  not 
the  last  that  she  received  from  him  by  many ;  and  whilst 
she  was  miserable  exceedingly,  she  showed  it,  not  as 
children  do,  but  rather  like  some  chained  and  untamed 
animal,  in  tearless  stupor  and  in  sudden,  sharp  ferocity. 
And  this  the  more  because  she  spoke  but  a  very  few 
words  of  the  language  of  the  people  among  whom  she 
had  been  brought ;  her  own  tongue  was  one  full  of  round 
vowels  and  strange  sounds,  a  tongue  unknown  to  them. 

For  many  weeks  he  said  not  one  word  to  her,  cast  not 
one  look  at  her  ;  he  let  her  lead  the  same  life  that  was 
led  by  the  brutes  that  crawled  in  the  timbers,  or  by  the 
pigs  that  couched  and  were  kicked  in  the  straw.  The 
woman  Pitchou  gave  her  such  poor  scraps  of  garments 
or  of  victuals  as  she  chose ;  she  could  crouch  in  the 
corner  of  the  hearth  where  the  fire  warmth  reached ;  she 
could  sleep  in  the  hay  in  the  little  loft  under  the  roof;  so 
much  she  could  do  and  no  more. 

After  that  first  moment  in  which  her  vague  appeal  for 
pity  and  for  rest  had  been  answered  by  the  blow  that 
struck  her  senseless,  the  child  had  never  made  a  moan, 
nor  sought  for  any  solace. 

All  the  winter  through  she  lay  curled  up  on  the  tiles 
by  the  fence,  with  her  arms  round  the  great  body  of  the 
dog  and  his  head  upon  her  chest ;  they  were  both  starved, 


FOLLE-FARINE.  39 

beaten,  kicked,  and  scourged,  with  brutal  words  often- 
times j  they  had  the  community  of  misfortune,  and  they 
loved  one  another. 

The  blow  on  her  head,  the  coldness  of  the  season,  the 
scanty  food  that  was  cast  to  her,  all  united  to  keep  her 
brain  stupefied  and  her  body  almost  motionless.  She 
was  like  a  young  bear  that  is  motherless,  wounded, 
frozen,  famished,  but  which,  coiled  in  an  almost  con- 
tinual slumber,  keeps  its  blood  flowing  and  its  limbs  alive. 
And,  like  the  bear,  with  the  spring  she  awakened. 

When  the  townsfolk  and  the  peasants  came  to  the 
mill,  and  first  saw  this  creature  there,  with  her  wondrous 
vivid  hues,  and  her  bronzed  half-naked  limbs,  they  re- 
garded her  in  amazement,  and  asked  the  miller  whence 
she  came.     He  set  his  teeth,  and  answered  ever : 

u  The  woman  that  bore  her  was  Heine  Flamma." 

The  avowal  was  a  penance  set  to  himself,  but  to  it  he 
never  added  more  ;  and  they  feared  his  bitter  temper  and 
his  caustic  tongue  too  greatly  to  press  it  on  him,  or  even 
to  ask  him  whether  his  daughter  were  with  the  living  or 
the  dead. 

With  the  unfolding  of  the  young  leaves,  and  the 
loosening  of  the  frost-bound  waters,  and  the  unveiling 
of  the  violet  and  the  primrose  under  the  shadows  of  the 
wood,  all  budding  life  revives,  and  so  did  hers.  For  she 
could  escape  from  the  dead,  cold,  bitter  atmosphere  of 
the  silent  loveless  house,  where  her  bread  was  begrudged, 
and  the  cudgel  was  her  teacher,  out  into  the  freshness  and 
the  living  sunshine  of  the  young  blossoming  world,  where 
the  birds  and  the  beasts  and  tender  blue  flowers  and 
the  curling  green  boughs  were  her  comrades,  and  where 
she  could  stretch  her  limbs  in  freedom,  and  coil  herself 
among  the  branches,  and  steep  her  limbs  in  the  coolness 
of  waters,  and  bathe  her  aching  feet  in  the  moisture  of 
rain-filled  grasses. 

With  the  spring  she  arose,  the  true  forest  animal  she 
was  ;  wild,  fleet,  incapable  of  fear,  sure  of  foot,  in  unison 
with  all  the  things  of  the  earth  and  the  air,  and  stirred  by 
them  to  a  strange,  dumb,  ignorant,  passionate  gladness. 

She  had  been  scarce  seen  in  the  winter ;  with  the 
breaking  of  the  year  the  people  from  more  distant  places 


40  FOLLE-FARINE. 

who  rode  their  mules  down  to  the  mill  on  their  various 
errands  stared  at  this  child,  and  wondered  among  them- 
selves greatly,  and  at  length  asked  Claudis  Elamma 
whence  she  came. 

He  answered  ever,  setting  hard  his  teeth : 

•'The  woman  that  bore  her  was  one  accursed,  whom 
men  deemed  a  saint — Heine  Flamma." 

And  he  never  added  more.  To  tell  the  truth,  the  hor- 
rible, biting,  burning,  loathsome  truth,  was  a  penance 
that  he  had  set  to  himself,  and  from  which  he  never 
wavered. 

They  dared  not  ask  him  more;  for  many  were  his 
debtors,  and  all  feared  his  scourging  tongue.  But  when 
they  went  away,  and  gossiped  among  themselves  by  the 
wayside  well  or  under  the  awnings  of  the  market-stalls, 
they  said  to  one  another  that  it  was  just  as  they  had 
thought  long  ago  ;  the  creature  had  been  no  better  than 
her  kind  ;  and  they  had  never  credited  the  fable  that  God 
had  taken  her,  though  they  had  humored  the  miller  be- 
cause he  was  aged  and  in  dotage.  Whilst  one  old  woman, 
a  withered  and  witchlike  crone,  who  had  toiled  in  from 
the  fishing  village  with  a  creel  upon  her  back  and  the 
smell  of  the  sea  about  her  rags,  heard,  standing  in  the 
market-place,  and  laughed,  and  mocked  them,  these  seers 
who  were  so  wise  after  the  years  had  gone,  and  when 
the  truth  was  clear. 

u  You  knew,  you  knew,  you  knew !"  she  echoed,  with 
a  grin  upon  her  face.  "  Oh,  yes !  you  were  so  wise  I 
Who  said  seven  years  through  that  Reine  Flamma  was 
a  saint,  and  taken  by  the  saints  into  their  keeping  ?  And 
who  hissed  at  me  for  a  foul-mouthed  crone  when  I  said 
that  the  devil  had  more  to  do  with  her  than  the  good 
God,  and  that  the  black-browed  gypsy,  with  jewels  for 
eyes  in  his  head,  like  the  toad,  was  the  only  master  to 
whom  she  gave  herself  ?     Oh-he,  you  were  so  wise  1" 

So  she  mocked  them,  and  they  were  ashamed,  and 
held  their  peace  ;  well  knowing  that  indeed  no  creature 
among  them  had  ever  been  esteemed  so  pure,  so  chaste, 
and  so  honored  of  heaven  as  had  been  the  miller's 
daughter. 

Many  remembered  the  "  gypsy  with  the  jeweled  jeyes," 


FOLLE-FARINE.  41 

and  saw  those  brilliant,  fathomless,  midnight  eyes  repro- 
duced in  the  small  rich  face  of  the  child  whom  Heine 
Flamma,  as  her  own  father  said,  had  borne  in  shame  whilst 
they  had  been  glorifying  her  apotheosis.  And  it  came 
to  be  said,  as  time  went  on,  that  this  unknown  stranger 
had  been  the  fiend  himself,  taking  human  shape  for  the 
destruction  of  one  pure  soul,  and  the  mocking  of  all  true 
children  of  the  church. 

Legend  and  tradition  still  held  fast  their  minds  in  this 
remote,  ancient,  and  priest-ridden  place  ;  in  their  belief  the 
devil  was  still  a  living  power,  traversing  the  earth  and 
air  in  search  of  souls,  and  not  seldom  triumphing:  of 
metaphor  or  myth  they  were  ignorant,  Satan  to  them 
was  a  personality,  terrific,  and  oftentimes  irresistible, 
assuming  at  will  shapes  grotesque  or  awful,  human  or 
spiritual.  Their  forefathers  had  beheld  him  ;  why  not 
they? 

So  the  henhucksters  and  poulterers,  the  cider-makers 
and  tanners,  the  fisherfolk  from  the  seaboard,  and  the 
peasant  proprietors  from  the  country  round,  came  at 
length  in  all  seriousness  to  regard  the  young  child  at 
Ypres  as  a  devil-born  thing.  "  She  was  hell-begotten," 
they  would  mutter  when  they  saw  her ;  and  they  would 
cross  themselves,  and  avoid  her  if  they  could. 

The  time  had  gone  by,  unhappily,  as  they  considered, 
when  men  had  been  permitted  to  burn  such  creatures  as 
this;  they  knew  it  and  were  sorry  for  it;  the  world, 
they  thought,  had  been  better  when  Jews  had  blazed  like 
torches,  and  witches  had  crackled  like  firewood  ;  such 
treats  were  forbidden  now,  they  knew,  but  many,  for  all 
that,  thought  within  themselves  that  it  was  a  pity  it  should 
be  so,  and  that  it  was  mistaken  mercy  in  the  age  they 
lived  in  which  forbade  the  purifying  of  the  earth  by  fire 
of  such  as  she. 

In  the  winter-time,  when  they  first  saw  her,  unusual 
floods  swept  the  country,  and  destroyed  much  of  their 
property ;  in  the  spring  which  followed  there  were  mil- 
dew and  sickness  everywhere  ;  in  the  summer  there  was 
a  long  drought,  and  by  consequence  there  came  a  bad 
harvest,  and  great  suffering  and  scarcity. 

There  were  not  a  few  in  the  district  who  attributed  all 
4* 


42  FOLLE-FARINE. 

these  woes  to  the  advent  of  the  child  of  darkness,  and 
who  murmured  openly  in  their  huts  and  homesteads  that 
no  good  would  befall  them  so  long  as  this  offspring  of 
hell  were  suffered  in  their  midst. 

Since,  however,  the  time  was  past  when  the  broad 
market-place  could  have  been  filled  with  a  curious,  breath- 
less, eager  crowd,  and  the  gray  cathedral  have  grown  red 
in  the  glare  of  flames  fed  by  a  young  living  body,  they 
held  their  hands  from  doing  her  harm,  and  said  these 
things  only  in  their  own  ingle-nooks,  and  contented  them- 
selves with  forbidding  their  children  to  consort  with  her, 
and  with  drawing  their  mules  to  the  other  side  of  the 
road  when  they  met  her.  They  did  not  mean  to  be  cruel, 
they  only  acted  in  their  own  self-defense,  and  dealt  with 
her  as  their  fellow-countrymen  dealt  with  a  cagote — 
"only." 

Hence,  when,  with  the  reviving  year  the  child's  dulled 
brain  awakened,  and  all  the  animal  activity  in  her  sprang 
into  vigorous  action,  she  found  herself  shunned,  marked, 
and  glanced  at  with  averted  looks  of  mingled  dread  and 
scorn.  "A  daughter  of  the  devil  1"  she  heard  again  and 
again  muttered  as  they  passed  her ;  she  grew  to  take 
shelter  in  this  repute  as  in  a  fortress,  and  to  be  proud, 
with  a  savage  pride,  of  her  imputed  origin. 

It  made  her  a  little  fierce,  mute,  fearless,  reckless,  all- 
daring,  and  all-enduring  animal.  An  animal  in  her  fe- 
rocities, her  mute  instincts,  her  supreme  patience,  her 
physical  perfectness  of  body  and  of  health.  Perfect  of 
shape  and  hue  ;  full  of  force  to  resist ;  ignorant  either  of 
hope  or  fear ;  desiring  only  one  thing,  liberty ;  with  no 
knowledge,  but  with  unerring  instinct. 

She  was  at  an  age  when  happier  creatures  have  scarce 
escaped  from  their  mother's  arms  ;  but  she  had  not  even 
thus  early  a  memory  of  her  mother,  and  she  had  been 
shaken  off  to  live  or  die,  to  fight  or  famish,  as  a  young 
fox  whose  dam  has  been  flung  to  the  hounds  is  driven 
away  to  starve  in  the  winter  woods,  or  save  himself,  if 
he  have  strength,  by  slaughter. 

She  was  a  tame  animal  only  in  one  thing:  she  took 
blows  uncomplainingly,  and  as  though  comprehending 
that  they  were  her  inevitable  portion. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  43 

"  The  child  of  the  devil !"  they  said.  la  a  dumb,  half- 
unconscious  fashion,  this  five-year-old  creature  wondered 
sometimes  why  the  devil  had  not  been  good  enough  to 
give  her  a  skin  that  would  not  feel,  and  veins  that  would 
not  bleed. 

She  had  always  been  beaten  ever  since  her  birth  ;  she 
was  beaten  here ;  she  thought  it  a  law  of  life,  as  other 
children  think  it  such  to  have  their  mother's  kiss  and 
their  daily  food  and  nightly  prayer. 

Claudis  Flamma  did  after  this  manner  his  duty  by  her. 
She  was  to  him  a  thing  accursed,  possessed,  loathsome, 
imbued  with  evil  from  her  origin;  bu^he  did  what  he 
deemed  his  duty.  He  clothed  her,  if  scantily  ;  he  fed  her, 
if  meagerly  ;  he  lashed  her  with  all  the  caustic  gibes  that 
came  naturally  to  his  tongue ;  he  set  her  hard  tasks  to 
keep  her  from  idleness  ;  he  beat  her  when  she  did  not, 
and  not  seldom  when  she  did,  them.  He  dashed  holy 
water  on  her  many  times ;  and  used  a  stick  to  her  with- 
out mercy. 

After  this  light  he  did  his  duty.  That  he  should 
hate  her,  was  to  fulfill  a  duty  also  in  his  eyes ;  he  had 
always  been  told  that  it  was  right  to  abhor  the  things 
of  darkness ;  and  to  him  she  was  a  thing  of  utter  dark- 
ness, a  thing  born  of  the  black  ruin  of  a  stainless  soul, 
begotten  by  the  pollution  and  corruption  of  an  infernal 
tempter. 

He  never  questioned  her  as  to  her  past — that  short 
past,  like  the  span  of  an  insect's  life,  which  yet  had  suf- 
ficed to  gift  her  with  passions,  with  instincts,  with  de- 
sires, even  with  memories, — in  a  word,  with  character  : — 
a  character  he  could  neither  change  nor  break;  a  thing 
formed  already,  for  good  or  for  evil,  abidingly. 

He  never  spoke  to  her  except  in  sharp  irony  or  in  curt 
command.  He  set  her  hard  tasks  of  bodily  labor  which 
she  did  not  dispute,  but  accomplished  so  far  as  her  small 
strength  lay,  with  a  mute  dogged  patience,  half  ferocity, 
half  passiveness. 

In  those  first  winter  days  of  her  arrival  he  called  her 
Folle-Farine ;  taking  the  most  worthless,  the  most  use- 
less, the  most  abject,  the  most  despised  thing  he  knew  in 
all  his  daily  life  from  which  to  name  her ;  and  the  name 


44  FOLLE-FARINE. 

adhered  to  her,  and  was  the  only  one  by  which  she  was 
ever  known. 

Folle-Farine  ! — as  one  may  say,  the  Dust. 

In  time  she  grew  to  believe  that  it  was  really  hers ; 
even  as  in  time  she  began  to  forget  that  strange,  deep, 
rich  tongue  in  which  she  had  babbled  her  first  words, 
and  to  know  no  other  tongue  than  the  Norman-French 
about  her. 

Yet  in  her  there  existed  imagination,  tenderness,  grati- 
tude, and  a  certain  wild  and  true  nobility,  though  the  old 
man  Flamma  would  never  have  looked  for  them,  never 
have  believed  in^them.  She  was  devil-born :  she  was 
of  devil  nature:  in  his  eyes. 

Upon  his  own  mill-ditch,  foul  and  fetid,  refuse  would 
sometimes  gather,  and  receiving  the  seed  of  the  lily, 
would  give  birth  to  blossoms  born  stainless  out  of  cor- 
ruption. But  the  allegory  had  no  meaning  for  him. 
Had  any  one  pointed  it  out  to  him  he  would  have  taken 
the  speaker  into  his  orchard,  and  said : 

"  Will  the  crab  bear  a  fruit  not  bitter  ?  Will  the  night- 
shade give  out  sweetness  and  honey  ?  Fool ! — as  the 
stem  so  the  branch,  as  the  sap  so  the  blossom." 

And  this  fruit  of  sin  and  shame  was  poison  in  his 
sight. 


CHAPTER   IY. 

The  little  dim  mind  of  the  five-year-old  child  was  not 
a  blank  ;  it  was  indeed  filled  to  overflowing  with  pictures 
that  her  tongue  could  not  have  told  of,  even  had  she 
spoken  the  language  of  the  people  amidst  whom  she  had 
been  cast. 

A  land  altogether  unlike  that  in  which  she  had  been 
set  down  that  bitter  night  of  snow  and  storm :  a  land 
noble  and  wild,  and  full  of  color,  broken  into  vast  heights 
and  narrow  valleys,  clothed  with  green  beech  woods  and 
with  forests  of  oak  and  of  walnut,  filled  with  the  noise 
of  torrents  leaping  from  crag  to  crag,  and  of  brown 


FOLLE-FARINE.  45 

mountain-streams  rushing  broad  and  angry  through 
wooded  ravines.  A  land,  made  beautiful  by  moss-grown 
water-mills,  and  lofty  gateways  of  gray  rock ;  and  still 
shadowy  pools,  in  which  the  bright  fish  leaped,  and 
mules'  bells  that  rang  drowsily  through  leafy  gorges; 
and  limestone  crags  that  pierced  the  clouds,  spirelike, 
and  fantastic  in  a  thousand  shapes ;  and  high  blue  crests 
of  snow-topped  mountains,  whose  pinnacles  glowed  to 
the  divinest  flush  of  rose  and  amber  with  the  setting  of 
the  sun. 

This  land, she  remembered  vaguely,  yet  gloriously,  as 
the  splendors  of  a  dream  of  Paradise  rest  on  the  brain 
of  some  young  sleeper  wakening  in  squalor,  cold,  and 
pain.  But  the  people  of  the  place  she  had  been  brought 
to  could  not  comprehend  her  few,  shy,  sullen  words,  and 
her  strange,  imperfect  trills  of  song ;  and  she  could  not 
tell  them  that  this  land  had  been  no  realm  enchanted 
of  fairy  or  of  fiend,  but  only  the  forest  region  of  the 
Liebana. 

Thither,  one  rich  autumn  day,  a  tribe  of  gypsies  had 
made  their  camp.  They  were  a  score  in  all ;  they  held 
themselves  one  of  the  noblest  branches  of  their  wide 
family;  they  were  people  with  pure  Eastern  blood  in 
them,  and  all  the  grace  and  the  gravity  of  the  Oriental  in 
their  forms  and  postures. 

They  stole  horses  and  sheep;  they  harried  cattle; 
they  stopped  the  mules  in  the  passes,  and  lightened  their 
load  of  wine-skins  :  they  entered  the  posada,  when  they 
deigned  to  enter  one  at  all,  with  neither  civil  question 
nor  show  of  purse,  but  with  a  gleam  of  the  teeth,  like 
a  threatening  dog,  and  the  flash  of  the  knife,  half  drawn 
out  of  the  girdle.  They  were  low  thieves  and  mean 
liars;  wild  daredevils  and  loose  livers;  loathers  of  labor 
and  lovers  of  idle  days  and  plundering  nights ;  yet  they 
were  beautiful,  with  the  noble,  calm,  scornful  beauty  of 
the  East,  and  they  wore  their  rags  with  an  air  that  was 
in  itself  an  empire. 

They  could  play,  too,  in  heavenly  fashion,  on  their  old 
three-stringed  viols ;  and  when  their  women  danced  on 
the  sward  by  moonlight,  under  the  broken  'shadows  of 
some   Moorish  ruin,   clanging   high   their  tambourines 


46  FOLLE-FARINE. 

above  their  graceful  heads,  and  tossing  the  shining  se- 
quins that  bound  their  heavy  hair,  the  muleteer  or  the 
herdsman,  seeing  them  from  afar,  shook  with  fear,  and 
thought  of  the  tales  told  him  in  his  childhood  by  his 
grandam  of  the  spirits  of  the  dead  Moors  that  rose  to  re- 
velry, at  midnight,  in  the  haunts  of  their  old  lost  kingdom. 

Among  them  was  a  man  yet  more  handsome  than 
the  rest,  taller  and  lither  still ;  wondrous  at  leaping  and 
wrestling,  and  all  athletic  things  ;  surest  of  any  to  win  a 
woman,  to  tame  a  horse,  to  strike  down  a  bull  at  a  blow, 
to  silence  an  angry  group  at  a  wineshop  with  a  single 
glance  of  his  terrible  eyes. 

His  name  was  Taric. 

He  had  left  them  often  to  wander  by  himself  into  many 
countries,  and  at  times  when,  by  talent  or  by  terrorism, 
he  had  netted  gold  enough  to  play  the  fool  to  his  fancy, 
he  had  gone  to  some  strange  city,  where  credulity  and 
luxury  prevailed,  and  there  had  lived  like  a  prince,  as  his 
own  phrase  ran,  and  gamed  and  intrigued,  and  feasted, 
and  roystered  right  royally  whilst  his  gains  lasted. 

Those  spent,  he  would  always  return  awhile,  and  lead 
the  common,  roving,  thieving  life  of  his  friends  and  breth- 
ren, till  the  fit  of  ambition  or  the  run  of  luck  were  again 
on  him.  Then  his  people  would  afresh  lose  sight  of 
him  to  light  on  him,  velvet-clad,  and  wine-bibbing,  in 
some  painter's  den  in  some  foreign  town,  or  welcome  him 
ragged,  famished,  and  footweary,  on  their  own  sunburnt 
sierras. 

And  the  mystery  of  his  ways  endeared  him  to  them  ; 
and  they  made  him  welcome  whenever  he  returned,  and 
never  quarreled  with  him  for  his  faithlessness;  l»ut  if 
there  were  anything  wilder  or  wickeder,  bolder  or  keener, 
on  hand  than  was  usual,  his  tribe  would  always  say — 
"Let  Taric  lead." 

One  day  their  camp  was  made  in  a  gorge  under  the 
great  shadows  of  the  Picos  da  Europa,  a  place  that  they 
loved  much,  and  settled  in  often,  finding  the  chestnut 
woods  and  the  cliff  caverns  fair  for  shelter,  the  heather 
abounding  in  grouse,  and  the  pools  full  of  trout,  fair  for 
feeding.  That  day  Taric  returned  from  a  year-long  ab- 
sence,  suddenly  standing,   dark  and  mighty,   between 


FOLLE-FARINE.  47 

them  and  the  light,  as  they  lay  around  their  soup- 
kettle,  awaiting  their  evening  meal. 

"  There  is  a  woman  in  labor,  a  league  back ;  by  the 
great  cork-tree,  against  the  bridge,"  he  said  to  them. 
"  Go  to  her  some  of  you." 

And,  with  a  look  to  the  women  which  singled  out  two 
for  the  errand,  he  stretched  himself  in  the  warmth  of  the 
fire,  and  helped  himself  to  the  soup,  and  lay  quiet,  vouch- 
safing them  never  a  word,  but  playing  meaningly  with 
the  knife  handle  thrust  into  his  shirt;  for  he  saw  that 
some  of  the  men  were  about  to  oppose  his  share  of  a 
common  meal  which  he  had  not  earned  by  a  common 
right. 

It  was  Taric — a  name  of  some  terror  came  to  their 
fierce  souls. 

Taric,  the  strongest  and  fleetest  and  most  well  favored 
of  them  all ;  Taric,  who  had  slain  the  bull  that  all  the 
matadors  had  failed  to  daunt;  Taric,  who  had  torn  up 
the  young  elm,  when  they  needed  a  bridge  over  a  flood, 
as  easily  as  a  child  plucks  up  a  reed ;  Taric,  who  had 
stopped  the  fiercest  contrabandista  in  all  those  parts,  and 
cut  the  man's  throat  with  no  more  ado  than  a  butcher 
slits  a  lamb's. 

So  they  were  silent,  and  let  him  take  his  portion  of  the 
fire  and  of  the  broth,  and  of  the  thin  red  wine. 

Meanwhile  the  two  gypsies,  Quita  and  Zara,  went  on 
their  quest,  and  found  things  as  he  had  said. 

Under  the  great  cork-tree,  where  the  grass  was  long 
and  damp,  and  the  wood  grew  thickly,  and  an  old  rude 
bridge  of  unhewn  blocks  of  rock  spanned,  with  one  arch, 
the  river  as  it  rushed  downward  from  its  limestone  bed 
aloft,  they  found  a  woman  just  dead  and  a  child  just 
born. 

Quita  looked  the  woman  all  over  hastily,  to  see  if,  by 
any  chance,  any  gold  or  jewels  might  be  on  her ;  there 
were  none.  There  was  only  Ifn  ivory  cross  on  her  chest, 
which  Quita  drew  off  and  hid.  Quita  covered  her  with 
a  few  boughs  and  left  her. 

Zara  wrapped  the  child  in  a  bit  of  her  woolen  skirt, 
and  held  it  warm  in  her  breast,  and  hastened  to  the  camp 
with  it. 


48  FOLLE-FARINE. 

"  She  is  dead,  Taric,"  said  Quita,  meaning  the  woman 
she  had  left. 

He  nodded  his  handsome  head. 

"  This  is  yours,  Taric?"  said  Zara,  meaning  the  child 
she  held. 

He  nodded  again,  and  drank  another  drop  of  wine,  and 
stretched  himself. 

"  What  shall  we  do  with. her?"  asked  Quita. 

"  Let  her  lie  there,"  he  answered  her. 

"  What  shall  we  do  with  it  ?"  asked  Zara. 

He  laughed,  and  drew  his  knife  against  his  own  brown 
throat  in  a  significant  gesture. 

Zara  said  no  word  to  him,  but  she  went  away  with  the 
child  under  some  branches,  on  which  was  hung  a  tattered 
piece  of  awning,  orange  striped,  that  marked  her  own 
especial  resting-place. 

Out  of  the  group  about  the  fire,  one  man,  rising,  ad- 
vanced, and  looked  Taric  full  in  the  eyes. 

"  Has  the  woman  died  by  foul  means  ?" 

Taric,  who  never  let  any  living  soul  molest  or  menace 
him,  answered  him  without  offense,  and  with  a  savage 
candor, — 

"  No — that  I  swear.  I  used  no  foul  play  against  her. 
Go  look  at  her  if  you  like.  I  loved  her  well  enough 
while  she  lived.  But  what  does  that  matter?  She  is 
dead.    So  best.    Women  are  as  many  as  the  mulberries." 

"You  loved  her,  and  you  will  let  the  wolves  eat  her 
body  ?" 

Taric  laughed. 

"  There  are  no  wolves  in  Liebana.  Go  and  bury  her 
if  you  choose,  Phratos." 

"I  will,"  the  other  answered  him;  and  he  took  his 
way  to  the  cork-tree  by  the  bridge. 

The  man  who  spoke  was  called  Phratos. 

He  was  not  like  his  tribe  in  anything:  except  in  a 
mutual  love  for  a  life  thatVandered  always,  and  was  to 
no  man  responsible,  and  needed  no  roof-tree,  and  wanted 
no  settled  habitation,  but  preferred  to  dwell  wild  with  the 
roe  and  the  cony,  and  to  be  hungry  and  unclad,  rather 
than  to  eat  the  good  things  of  the  earth  in  submission 
and  in  durance. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  49 

He  had  not  their  physical  perfection:  an  accident  at 
his  birth  had  made  his  spine  misshapen,  and  his  gait 
halting.  His  features  would  have  been  grotesque  in  their 
ugliness,  except  for  the  sweet  pathos  of  the  eyes  and  the 
gay  archness  of  the  mouth. 

Among  a  race  noted  for  its  singular  beauty  of  face 
and  form,  Phratos  alone  was  deformed  and  unlovely  ; 
and  yet  both  deformity  and  unloveliness  were  in  a  way 
poetic  and  uncommon ;  and  in  his  rough  sheepskin  gar- 
ments, knotted  to  his  waist  with  a  leathern  thong,  and 
with  his  thick  tangled  hair  falling  down  on  his  shoulders, 
they  were  rather  the  deformity  of  the  brake-haunting  faun, 
the  unloveliness  of  the  moon-dancing  satyr,  than  those  of 
a  man  and  a  vagrant.  With  the  likeness  he  had  the  tem- 
per of  the  old  dead  gods  of  the  forests  and  rivers;  he 
loved  music,  and  could  make  it,  in  all  its  innumerable 
sighs  and  songs,  give  a  voice  to  all  creatures  and  things 
of  the  world,  of  the  waters  and  the  woodlands ;  and  for 
many  things  he  was  sorrowful  continually,  and  for  other 
things  he  forever  laughed  and  was  glad. 

Though  he  was  misshapen,  and  even,  as  some  said,  not 
altogether  straight  in  his  wits,  yet  his  kin  honored  him. 

For  he  could  draw  music  from  the  rude  strings  of  his 
old  viol  that  surpassed  their  own  melodies  as  far  as  the 
shining  of  the  sun  on  the  summits  of  the  Europa  sur- 
passed the  trembling  of  the  little  lamps  under  the  painted 
roadside  Cavaries. 

He  was  only  a  gypsy ;  he  only  played  as  the  fancy 
moved  him,  by  a  bright  fountain  at  a  noonday  halt,  under 
the  ruined  arches  of  a  Saracenic  temple,  before  the  tawny 
gleam  of  a  vast  dim  plain  at  sunrise;  in  a  cool  shadowy 
court  where  the  vines  shut  out  all  light;  beneath  a  bal- 
cony at  night,  when  the  moonbeams  gleamed  on  some 
fair  unknown  face,  thrust  for  a  moment  from  the  darkness 
through  the  white  magnolia  flowers.  Yet  he  played  in 
suchwise  as  makes  women  weep,  and  holds  children  and 
dogs  still  to  listen,  and  moves  grown  men  to  shade  their 
eyes  with  their  hands,  and  think  of  old  dead  times,  when 
they  played  and  prayed  at  their  mothers'  knees. 

And  his  music  had  so  spoken  to  himself  that,  although 
true  to  his  tribe  and  all  their  traditions,  loving  the  va- 

5 


50  FOLLE-FARINE. 

grant  life  in  the  open  air,  and  being  incapable  of  pursuing 
any  other,  he  yet  neither  stole  nor  slew,  neither  tricked 
nor  lied,  but  found  his  way  vaguely  to  honesty  and  can- 
dor, and,  having  found  them,  clove  to  them,  so  that  none 
could  turn  him;  living  on  such  scant  gains  as  were 
thrown  to  him  for  his  music  from  balconies  and  po- 
sada  windows  and  winehouse  doors  in  the  hamlets  and 
towns  through  which  he  passed,  and  making  a  handful 
of  pulse  and  a  slice  of  melon,  a  couch  of  leaves  and  a 
draught  of  water,  suffice  to  him  for  his  few  and  simple 
wants. 

His  people  reproached  him,  indeed,  with  demeaning 
their  race  by  taking  payment  in  lieu  of  making  thefts ; 
and  they  mocked  him  often,  and  taunted  him,  though  in 
a  manner  they  all  loved  him, — the  reckless  and  blood- 
stained Taric  most,  perhaps,  of  all.  But  he  would  never 
quarrel  with  them,  neither  would  he  give  over  his  strange 
ways  which  so  incensed  them,  and  with  time  they  saw 
that  Phratos  was  a  gifted  fool,  who,  like  other  mad  sim- 
ple creatures,  had  best  be  left  to  go  on  his  own  way 
unmolested  and  without  contradiction. 

If,  too,  they  had  driven  him  from  their  midst,  they 
would  have  missed  his  music  sorely;  that  music  which 
awoke  them  at  break  of  clay  soaring  up  through  their 
roof  of  chestnut  leaves  like  a  lark's  song  piercing  the 
skies. 

Phratos  came  now  to  the  dead  woman,  and  drew  off 
the  boughs,  and  looked  at  her.  She  was  quite  dead. 
She  had  died  where  she  had  first  sunk  down,  unable  to 
reach  her  promised  resting-place.  It  was  a  damp  green 
nook  on  the  edge- of  the  bright  mountain-river,  at  the 
entrance  of  that  narrow  gorge  in  which  the  encampment 
had  been  made. 

The  face,  which  was  white  and  young,  lay  upward, 
with  the  shadows  of  the  flickering  foliage  on  it;  and  the 
eyes,  which  Quita  had  not  closed,  were  large  and  blue ; 
her  hair,  which  was  long  and  brown,  was  loose,  and  had 
got  wet  among  the  grass,  and  had  little  buds  of  flowers 
and  stray  golden  leaves  twisted  in  it. 

Phratos  felt  sorrow  for  her  as  he  looked. 

He  could  imagine  her  history. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  51 

Taric,  whom  many  women  had  loved,  had  besought 
many  a  one  thus  to  share  his  fierce  free  life  for  a  little 
space,  and  then  drift  away  out  of  it  by  chance,  or  be 
driven  away  from  it  by  his  fickle  passions,  or  be  taken 
away  like  this  one  by  death. 

In  her  bosom,  slipped  in  her  clothes,  was  a  letter.  It 
was  written  in  a  tongue  he  did  not  know.  He  held 
it  awhile,  thinking,  then  he  folded  it  up  and  put  it  in  his 
girdle, — it  might  be  of  use,  who  could  tell  ?  There  was 
the  child,  there,  that  might  live ;  unless  the  camp  broke 
up,  and  Zara  left  it  under  a  walnut-tree  to  die,  with  the 
last  butterflies  of  the  fading  summer,  which  was  in  all 
likelihood  all  she  would  do. 

Nevertheless  he  kept  the  letter,  and  when  he  had 
looked  long  enough  at  the  dead  creature,  he  turned  to  the 
tools  he  had  brought  with  him,  and  set  patiently  to  make 
her  grave. 

He  could  only  work  slowly,  for  he  was  weak  of  body, 
and  his  infirmity  made  all  manual  toil  painful  to  him. 
His  task  was  hard,  even  though  the  earth  was  so  soft 
from  recent  heavy  rains. 

The  sun  set  whilst  he  was  still  engaged  on  it;  and  it 
was  quite  nightfall  before  he  had  fully  accomplished  it. 
When  the  grave  was  ready  he  filled  it  carefully  with  the 
golden  leaves  that  had  fallen,  and  the  thick  many-colored 
mosses  that  covered  the  ground  like  a  carpet. 

Then  he  laid  the  body  tenderly  down  within  that  forest 
shroud,  and,  with  the  moss  like  a  winding-sheet  between 
it  and  the  earth  which  had  to  fall  on  it,  he  committed  the 
dead  woman  to  her  resting-place. 

It  did  not  seem  strange  to  him,  or  awful,  to  leave  her 
there. 

He  was  a  gypsy,  and  to  him  the  grave  under  a  forest- 
tree  and  by  a  mountain-stream  seemed  the  most  natural 
rest  at  last  that  any  creature  could  desire  or  claim.  No 
rites  seemed  needful  to  him,  and  no  sense  of  any  neglect, 
cruel  or  unfitting,  jarred  on  him  in  thus  leaving  her  in  her 
loneliness,  with  only  the  cry  of  the  bittern  or  the  bell  of 
the  wild  roe  as  a  requiem. 

Yet  a  certain  sorrow  for  this  unknown  and  lost  life  was 
on  him,  bohemian  though  he  Was,  as  he  took  up  his  mat- 


52  FOLLE-FARINE. 

tock  and  turned  away,  and  went  backward  down  the 
gorge,  and  left  her  to  lie  there  forever,  through  rain  and 
sunshine,  through  wind  and  storm,  through  the  calm  of 
the  summer  and  the  flush  of  the  autumn,  and  the  wildness 
of  the  winter,  when  the  swollen  stream  should  sweep 
above  her  tomb,  and  the  famished  beasts  of  the  hills  would 
lift  up  their  voices  around  it. 

When  he  reached  the  camp,  he  gave  the  letter  to  Taric. 

Taric,  knowing  the  tongue  it  was  written  in,  and  being 
able  to  understand  the  character,  looked  at  it  and  read  it 
through  by  the  light  of  the  flaming  wood.  When  he  had 
done  so  he  tossed  it  behind,  in  among  the  boughs,  in  scorn. 

"  The  poor  fool's  prayer  to  the  brute  that  she  hated  1" 
he  said,  with  a  scoff. 

Phratos  lifted  up  the  letter  and  kept  it. 

In  a  later  time  he  found  some  one  who  could  decipher 
it  for  him. 

It  was  the  letter  of  Heine  Flamma  to  the  miller  at 
Ypres,  telling  him  the  brief  story  of  her  fatal  passion,  and 
imploring  from  him  mercy  to  her  unborn  child  should  it 
survive  her  and  be  ever  taken  to  him. 

Remorse  and  absence  had  softened  to  her  the  harshness 
and  the  meanness  of  her  father's  character ;  she  only  re- 
membered that  he  had  loved  her,  and  had  deemed  her 
pure  and  faithful  as  the  saints  of  God.  There  was  no 
word  in  the  appeal  by  which  it  could  have  been  inferred 
that  Clandis  Flamma  had  been  other  than  a  man  much 
wronged  and  loving  much,  patient  of  heart,  and  without 
blame  in  his  simple  life. 

Phratos  took  the  letter  and  cherished  it.  He  thought 
it  might  some  day  save  her  offspring.  This  old  man's 
vengeance  could  not,  he  thought,  be  so  cruel  to  the  child 
as  might  be  the  curse  and  the  knife  of  Taric. 

"  She  must  have  been  beautiful  ?"  said  Phratos  to  him, 
after  awhile,  that  night ;  "  and  you  care  no  more  for  her 
than  that." 

Taric  stretched  his  mighty  limbs  in  the  warmth  of  the 
flame  and  made  his  answer : 

"  There  will  be  as  good  grapes  on  the  vines  next  year 
as  any  we  gathered  this.  What  does  it  signify  ? — she 
was  only  a  woman. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  53 

u  She  loved  me ;  she  thought  me  a  god,  a  devil,  a 
prince,  a  chief, — all  manner  of  things  ; —  the  people 
thought  so  too.  She  was  sick  of  her  life.  She  was  sick 
of  the  priests  and  the  beads,  and  the  mill  and  the  mar- 
ket. She  was  fair  to  look  at,  and  the  fools  called  her  a 
saint.  When  a  woman  is  young  and  has  beauty,  it  is 
dull  to  be  worshiped — in  that  way. 

"  I  met  her  in  the  wood  one  summer  night.  The  sun 
was  setting.  I  do  not  know  why  I  cared  for  her — I  did. 
She  was  like  a  tall  white  lily ;  these  women  of  ours  are 
only  great  tawny  sunflowers. 

"  She  was  pure  and  straight  of  life  ;  she  believed  in 
heaven  and  hell ;  she  was  innocent  as  the  child  unborn  ; 
it  was  tempting  to  kill  all  that.  It  is  so  easy  to  kill  it 
when  a  woman  loves  you.  I  taught  her  what  passion 
and  freedom  and  pleasure  and  torment  all  meant.  She 
came  with  me, — after  a  struggle,  a  hard  one.  I  kept  her 
loyally  while  the  gold  lasted  ;  that  I  swear.  I  took  her 
to  many  cities.  I  let  her  have  jewels  and  music,  and 
silk  dresses,  and  fine  linen.  I  was  good  to  her ;  that  I 
swear. 

"But  after  a  bit  she  pined,  ond  grew  dull  again,  and 
wept  in  secret,  and  at  times  I  caught  her  praying  to  the 
white  cross  which  she  wore  on  her  breast.  That  made 
me  mad.  I  cursed  her  and  beat  her.  She  never  said 
anything;  she  seemed  only  to  love  me  more,  and  that 
made  me  more  mad. 

"  Then  I  got  poor  again,  and  I  had  to  sell  her  things 
one  by  one.  Not  that  she  minded  that,  she  would  have 
sold  her  soul  for  me.  We  wandered  north  and  south ; 
and  I  made  money  sometimes  by  the  dice,  or  by  breaking 
a  horse,  or  by  fooling  a  woman,  or  by  snatching  a  jewel 
off  one  of  their  dolls  in  their  churches;  and  I  wanted  to 
get  rid  of  her,  and  I  could  not  tell  how.  I  had  not  the 
heart  to  kill  her  outright. 

"  But  she  never  said  a  rough  word,  you  know,  and 
that  makes  a  man  mad.  Maddalena  or  Kara  or  Rachel 
— any  of  them — would  have  flown  and  struck  a  knife 
at  me,  and  hissed  like  a  snake,  and  there  would  have 
been  blows  and'  furious  words  and  bloodshed  ;  and  then 
we  should  have  kissed,  and  been  lovers  again,  fast  and 

5* 


54  FOLLE-FARINE. 

fierce.  But  a  woman  who  is  quiet,  and  only  looks  at 
you  with  great,  sad,  soft  eyes,  when  you  strike  her, — 
what  is  one  to  do  ? 

"We  were  horribly  poor  at  last:  we  slept  in  barns 
and  haylofts ;  we  ate  berries  and  drank  the  brook-water. 
She  grew  weak,  and  could  hardly  walk.  Many  a  time 
I  have  been  tempted  to  let  her  lie  and  die  in  the  hedge- 
way  or  on  the  plains,  and  I  did  not, — one  is  so  foolish 
sometimes  for  sake  of  a  woman.  She  knew  she  was  a 
burden  and  curse  to  me, — I  may  have  said  so,  perhaps; 
I  do  not  remember. 

"  At  last  I  heard  of  you  in  the  Liebana,  from  a  tribe 
we  fell  in  with  on  the  other  side  of  the  mountains,  and 
so  we  traveled  here  on  foot.  I  thought  she  would  have 
got  to  the  women  before  her  hour  arrived.  But  she  fell 
down  there,  and  could  not  stir :  and  so  the  end  came. 
It  is  best  as  it  is.  She  was  wretched,  and  what  could  I 
do  with  a  woman  like  that?  who  would  never  hearken  to 
another  lover,  nor  give  up  her  dead  God  on  his  cross, 
nor  take  so  much  as  a  broken  crust  if  it  were  stolen,  nor 
even  show  her  beauty  to  a  sculptor  to  be  carved  in  stone 
— for  I  tried  to  make  her  do  that,  and  she  would  not. 
It  is  best  as  it  is.  If  she  had  lived  we  could  have  done 
nothing  with  her.  And  yet  I  see  her  sometimes  as  I 
saw  her  that  night,  so  white  and  so  calm,  in  the  little 
green  wood,  as  the  sun  set " 

His  voice  ceased,  and  he  took  up  a  horn  full  of  vino 
clarete ;  and  drained  it ;  and  was  very  still,  stretching 
his  limbs  to  bask  in  the  heat  of^the  fire.  The  wine  had 
loosened  his  tongue,  and  he  had  spoken  from  his  heart, — 
truthfully. 

Phratos,  his  only  hearer,  was  silent. 

He  was  thinking  of  the  great  blue  sightless  eyes  that 
he  had  closed,  and  of  the  loose  brown  hair  on  which  he 
had  flung  the  wet  leaves  and  the  earth-clogged  mosses. 

"  The  child  lives  V  he  said  at  length. 

Taric,  who  was  sinking  to  sleep  after  the  long  fatigues 
of  a  heavy  tramp  through  mountain-passes,  stirred  sul- 
lenly with  an  oath. 
•  "  Let  it  go  to  hell !"  he  made  answer. 

And  these  were  the  only  words  of  baptism  that  were 


FOLLE-FARWE.  55 

spoken  over  the  nameless  daughter  of  Taric  the  gypsy 
and  of  Heine  Flamrna. 

That  night  Phratos  called  out  to  him  in  the  moonlight 
the  woman  Zara,  who  came  from  under  her  tent,  and 
stood  under  the  glistening  leaves,  strong  and  handsome, 
with  shining  eyes  and  snowy  teeth. 

"  The  child  lives  still  ?"  he  asked. 

Zara  nodded  her  head. 

"  You  will  try  and  keep  it  alive  ln  he  pursued. 

She  shrugged  her  shoulders. 

u  What  is  the  use  ?    Taric  would  rather  it  were  dead." 

"  What  matter  what  Taric  wishes.  Living  or  dead,  it 
will  not  hinder  him.  A  child  more  or  less  with  us, 
what  is  it?  Only  a  draught  of  goat's  milk  or  a  handful 
of  meal.  So  little ;  it  cannot  be  felt.  You  have  a  child 
of  your  own,  Zara  ;  you  cared  for  it  ?" 

"  Yes,"  she  answered,  with  a  sudden  softening  gleam 
of  her  bright  savage  eyes. 

She  had  a  brown,  strong,  year-old  boy,  who  kicked  his 
naked  limbs  on  the  sward  with  joy  at  Phratos's  music. 

"  Then  have  pity  on  this  motherless  creature,"  said 
Phratos,  wooingly.  "  I  buried  that  dead  woman ;  and 
her  eyes,  though  there  was  no  sight  in  them,  still  seemed 
to  pray  to  mine — and  to  pray  for  her  child.  Be  merciful, 
Zara.  Let  the  child  have  the  warmth  of  your,  arms  and 
the  defense  of  your  strength.  Be  merciful,  Zara;  and 
your  seed  shall  multiply  and  increase  tenfold,  and  shall 
be  stately  and  strong,  and  shall  spread  as  the  branches 
of  the  plane-trees,  on  which  the  storm  spends  its  fury 
in  vain,  and  beneath  which  all  things  of  the  earth  can 
find  refuge.  For  never  was  a  woman's  pity  fruitless, 
nor  the  fair  deeds  of  her  days  without  recompense." 

Zara  listened  quietly,  as  the  dreamy,  poetic,  persuasive 
words  stole  on  her  ear  like  music.  Like  the  rest  of  her 
people,  she  half  believed  in  him  as  a  seer  and  prophet; 
her  teeth  shone  out  in  a  soft  sudden  smile. 

11  You  are  always  a  fool,  Phratos,"  she  said ;  "  but  it 
shall  be  as  you  fancy." 

And  she  went  in  out  of  the  moonlit  leaves  and  the 
clear  cool,  autumn  night  into  the  little  dark  stiffling  tent, 
where  the  new-born  child  had  been  laid  away  in  a  cor- 


56  FOLLE-FARINE. 

ner  upon  a  rough-and-ready  bed  of  gathered  dusky  fir- 
needles. 

u  It  is  a  little  cub,  not  worth  the  saving;  and  its  dam 
was  not  of  our  people,"  she  said  to  herself,  as  she  lifted 
the  wailing  and  alien  creature  to  her  bosom. 

"  It  is  for  you,  my  angel,  that  I  do  it,"  she  murmured, 
looking  at  the  sleeping  face  of  her  own  son. 

Outside  the  tent  the  sweet  strains  of  Phratos's  music 
rose  sighing  and  soft;  and  mingling,  as  sounds  mingle  in 
a  dream,  with  the  murmurs  of  the  forest  leaves  and  the 
rushing  of  the  mountain-river.  He  gave  her  the  only 
payment  in  his  power. 

Zara,  hushing  the  strange  child  at  her  breast,  listened, 
and  was  half  touched,  half  angered. 

"  Why  should  he  play  for  this  little  stray  thing,  when 
he  never  played  once  for  you,  my  glory  ?"  she  said  to 
her  son,  as  she  put  the  dead  woman's  child  roughly 
away,  and  took  him  up  in  its  stead,  to  beat  together  in 
play  his  rosy  hands  and  cover  his  mouth  with  kisses. 

For  even  from  these,  the  world's  outcasts,  this  new  life 
of  a  few  hours'  span  was  rejected  as  unworthy  and  de- 
spised. 

Nevertheless,  the  music  played  on  through  the  still 
forest  night ;  and  nevertheless,  the  child  grew  and 
throve. 

The  tribe  of  Taric  abode  in  the  Liebana  or  in  the  ad- 
jacent country  along  the  banks  of  the  Deva  during  the 
space  of  four  years  and  more,  scarcely  losing  in  that 
time  the  sight,  either  from  near  or  far,  of  the  rosy  peaks 
of  the  Europa. 

He  did  not  abide  with  them ;  he  quarreled  with  them 
violently  concerning  some  division  of  a  capture  of  wine- 
skins, and  went  on  his  own  way  to  distant  provinces  and 
cities ;  to  the  gambling  and  roystering,  the  woman- 
fooling  and  the  bull-fighting,  that  this  soul  lusted  after 
always. 

His  daughter  he  left  to  dwell  in  the  tent  of  Zara,  and 
under  the  defense  of  Phratos. 

Once  or  twice,  in  sojourns  of  a  night  or  two  among 
his  own  people,  as  the  young  creature  grew  in  stature 
and  strength,  Taric  had  glanced  at  her,  and  called  her  to 


FOLLE-FARINE.  57 

him,  and  felt  the  litheness  of  her  limbs  and  the  weight  of 
her  hair,  and  laughed  as  he  thrust  her  from  him,  think- 
ing, in  time  to  come,  she — who  would  know  nothing  of 
her  mother's  dead  God  on  the  cross,  and  of  her  mother's 
idle,  weak  scruples — might  bring  him  a  fair  provision  in 
his  years  of  age,  when  his  hand  should  have  lost  its  weight 
against  men  and  his  form  its  goodliness  in  the  sight  of 
women. 

Once  or  twice  he  had  given  her  a  kick  of  his  foot,  or 
blow  with  his  leathern  whip,  when  she  crawled  in  the 
grass  too  near  his  path,  or  lay  asleep  in  the  sun  as  he 
chanced  to  pass  by  her. 

Otherwise  he  had  naught  to  do  with  her,  absent  or 
present ;  otherwise  he  left  her  to  chance  and  the  devil, 
who  were,  as  he  said,  according  to  the  Christians,  the 
natural  patrons  and  sponsors  of  all  love-children.  Chance 
and  the  Devil,  however,  had  not  wholly  their  way  in  the 
Liebana ;  for  besides  them  there  was  Phratos. 

Phratos  never  abandoned  her. 

Under  the  wolfskin  and  pineboughs  of  Zara's  tent  there 
was  misery  very  often. 

Zara  had  a  fresh  son  born  to  her  with  each  succeeding 
year ;  and  having  a  besotted  love  for  her  own  offspring, 
had  little  but  indifference  and  blows  for  the  stranger  who 
shared  their  bed  and  food.  Her  children,  brown  and 
curly,  naked  and  strong,  fought  one  another  like  panther 
cubs,  and  rode  in  a  cluster  like  red  mountain-ash  berries 
in  the  sheepskin  round  her  waist,  and  drank  by  turns  out 
of  the  pitcher  of  broth,  and  slept  all  together  on  dry  ferns 
and  mosses,  rolled  in  warm  balls  one  in  another  like 
young  bears. 

But  the  child  who  had  no  affinity  with  them,  who  was 
not  even  wholly  of  their  tribe,  but  had  in  her  what  they 
deemed  the  taint  of  gentile  blood,  was  not  allowed  to 
gnaw  her  bare  bone  or  her  ripe  fig  in  peace  if  they  wished 
for  it ;  was  never  carried  with  them  in  the  sheepskin  nest, 
but  left  to  totter  after  in  the  dust  or  mud  as  best  she 
might ;  was  forced  fo  wait  for  the  leavings  in  the  pitcher, 
or  go  without  if  leavings  there  were  none ;  and  was 
kicked  away  by  the  sturdy  limbs  of  these  young  males 
when  she  tried  to  creep  for  warmth's   sake   in   among 


53  FOLLE-FARINE. 

them  on  their  fern  bed.  But  she  minded  all  this  little ; 
since  in  the  Liebana  there  was  Phratos. 

Phratos  was  always  good  to  her.  The  prayer  which 
those  piteous  dead  eyes  had  made  he  always  answered. 
He  had  always  pity  for  the  child. 

Many  a  time,  but  for  his  remembrance,  she  would  have 
starved  outright  or  died  of  cold  in  those  wild  winters 
when  the  tribe  huddled  together  in  the  caverns  of  the 
limestone,  and  the  snow-drifts  were  driven  up  by  the 
northern  winds  and  blocked  them  there  for  many  days. 
Many  a  time  but  for  his  aid  she  would  have  dropped  on 
their" march  and  been  left  to  perish  as  she  might  on  the 
long  sunburnt  roads,  in  the  arid  midsummers,  when  the 
gypsies  plodded  on  their  dusty  way  through  the  sinuous 
windings  of  hillside  paths  and  along  the  rough  stones  of 
dried-up  water-courses,  in  gorges  and  passages  known 
alone  to  them  and  the  wild  deer. 

When  her  throat  was  parched  with  the  torment  of  long 
thirst,  it  was  he  who  raised  her  to  drink  from  the  rill  in 
the  rock,  high  above,  to  which  the  mothers  lifted  their 
eager  children,  leaving  her  to  gasp  and  gaze  unpitied. 
When  she  was  driven  away  from  the  noonday  meal  by 
the  hungry  and  clamorous  youngsters,  who  would  admit 
no  share  of  their  partridge  broth  and  stewed  lentils,  it 
was  he  who  bruised  the  maize  between  stones  for  her 
eating,  and  gathered  for  her  the  wild  fruit  of  the  quince 
and  the  mulberry. 

When  the  sons  of  Zara  had  kicked  and  bruised  and 
spurned  her  from  the  tent,  he  would  lead  her  away  to 
some  shadowy  place  where  the  leaves  grew  thickly,  and 
play  to  her  such  glad  and  buoyant  tuues  that  the  laughter 
seemed  to  bubble  from  the  listening  brooks  and  ripple 
among  the  swinging  boughs,  and  make  the  wild  hare 
skip  with  joy,  and  draw  the  timid  lizard  from  his  hole  to 
frolic.  And  when  the  way  was  long,  and  the  stony  paths 
cruel  to  her  little  bare  feet,  he  would  carry  her  aloft  on 
his  misshapen  shoulders,  where  his  old  viol  always  trav- 
eled ;  and  would  beguile  the  steep  w*ay  with  a  thousand 
quaint,  soft,  grotesque  conceits  of  all  the  flowers  and 
leaves  and  birds  and  animals:  talking  rather  to  himself 
than   her,  yet  talking  with  a  tender  fancifulness,  half 


FOLLE-FARINE  59 

humor  and  half  pathos,  that  soothed  her  tired  senses  like 
a  lullaby.  Hence  it  came  to  pass  that  the  sole  creature 
whom  she  loved  and  who  had  pity  for  her  was  the  un- 
couth, crippled,  gay,  sad,  gentle,  dauntless  creature  whom 
his  tribe  had  always  held  half  wittol  and  half  seer. 

Thus  the  life  in  the  hills  of  the  Liebana  went  on  till  the 
child  of  Taric  had  entered  her  sixth  year. 

She  had  both  beauty  and  grace  ;  she  had  the  old  Mo- 
resco  loveliness  in  its  higher  type ;  she  was  fleet  as  the 
roe,  strong  as  the  young  izard,  wild  as  the  wood-partridge 
on  the  wing;  she  had  grace  of  limb  from  the  postures  and 
dances  with  which  she  taught  herself  to  keep  time  to  the 
fantastic  music  of  the  viol ;  she  was  shy  and  sullen,  lierce 
and  savage,  to  all  save  himself,  for  the  hand  of  every 
other  was  against  her;  but  to  him,  she  was  docile  as 
the  dove  to  the  hand  that  feeds  it.  He  had  given  her  a 
string  of  bright  sequins  to  hang  on  her  hair,  and  when 
the  peasants  of  the  mountains  and  valleys  saw  her  by  the 
edge  of  some  green  woodland  pool,  whirling  by  moon- 
light to  the  sound  of  his  melodies,  they  took  her  to  be 
some  unearthly  spirit,  and  told  wonderful  things  over 
their  garlic  of  the  elf  crowned  with  stars  they  had  seen 
dancing  on  a  round  lotos-leaf  in  the  hush  of  the  night. 

In  the  Liebana  she  was  beaten  often,  hungry  almost 
always,  cursed  fiercely,  driven  away  by  the  mothers, 
mocked  and  flouted  by  the  children ;  and  this  taught  her 
silence  and  ferocity.  Yet  in  the  Liebana  she  was  happy, 
fur  one  creature  loved  her,  and  she  was  free— «free  to  lie 
in  the  long  grass,  to  bathe  in  the  still  pools,  to  watch  the 
wild  things  of  the  woods,  to  wander  ankle-deep  in  forest 
blossoms,  to  sleep  under  the  rocking  of  pines,  to  run 
against  the  sweet  force  of  the  wind,  to  climb  the  trees 
and  swing  cradled  in  leaves,  and  to  look  far  away  at  the 
snow  on  the  mountains,  and  to  dream,  and  to  love,  and 
to  be  content  in  dreaming  and  loving,  their  mystical 
glory  that  awoke  with  the  sun. 

One  day  in  the  red  autumn,  Taric  came ;  he  had  been 
wholly  absent  more  than  two  years. 

He  was  superb  to  the  sight  still,  with  matchless  splen- 
dor of  face  and  form,  but  his  carriage  was  more  reckless 
and  disordered  than  ever,  and  in  his  gemlike  and  night- 


60  FOLLE-FARINE. 

black  eyes,  there  was  a  look  of  cunning  and  of  subtle 
ferocity  new  to  them. 

His  life  had  gone  hardly  with  him,  and  to  the  indo- 
lence, the  passions,  the  rapacity,  the  slothful  sensuality 
of  the  gypsy — who  had  retained  all  the  vices  of  his 
race  whilst  losing  the  virtues  of  simplicity  in  living,  and 
of  endurance  under  hardship — the  gall  of  a  sharp  poverty 
had  become  unendurable:  and  to  live  without  dice,  and 
women,  and  wine,  and  boastful  brawling,  seemed  to  him 
to  be  worse  than  any  death. 

The  day  he  returned,  they  were  still  camped  in  the 
Liebaua;  in  one  of  its  narrow  gorges,  overhung  with  a 
thick  growth  of  trees,  and  coursed  through  by  a  headlong 
hill-stream  that  spread  itself  into  darkling  breadths  and 
leafy  pools,  in  which  the  fish  were  astir  under  great  snowy 
lilies  and  a  tangled  web  of  water-plants. 

He  strode  into  the  midst  of  them,  as  they  sat  round 
their  camp-fire  lit  beneath  a  shelf  of  rock,  as  his  wont 
was;  and  was  welcomed,  and  fed,  and  plied  with  such 
as  they  had,  with  that  mixture  of  sullen  respect  and  in- 
curable attachment  which  his  tribe  preserved,  through 
all  their  quarrels,  for  this,  the  finest  and  the  fiercest,  the 
most  fickle  and  the  most  faithless,  of  them  all. 

He  gorged  himself,  and  drank,  and  said  little. 

When  the  meal  was  done,  the  youug  of  the  tribe  scat- 
tered themselves  in  the  red  evening  light  under  the  great 
walnuts  ;  some  at  feud,  some  at  play. 

"Which  is  mine?"  he  asked,  surveying  the  children. 
They  showed  her  to  him.  The  sequins  were  round  her 
head ;  she  swung  on  a  bough  of  ash  ;  the  pool  beneath 
mirrored  her ;  she  was  singing  as  children  sing,  without 
words,  yet  musically  and  gladly,  catching  at  the  fireflies 
that  danced  above  her  in  the  leaves. 

"  Can  she  dance?"  he  asked  lazily  of  them. 

"In  her  own  fashion, — as  a  flower  in  the  wind,"  Phra- 
tos  answered  him,  with  a  smile  ;  and,  willing  to  woo  for 
her  the  good  graces  of  her  father,  he  slung  his  viol  off  his 
shoulders  and  tuned  it,  and  beckoned  the  child. 

She  came,  knowing  nothing  who  Taric  was;  he 
was  only  to  her  a  fierce-eyed  man  like  the  rest,  who 
would  beat  her,  most  likely,  if  she  stood  between  him 


FOLLE-FARINE.  61 

and  the  sun,  or  overturned  by  mischance  his  horn  of 
liquor. 

Phratos  played,  and  all  the  gypsy  children,  as  their 
wont  was,  danced. 

But  she  danced  all  alone,  and  with  a  grace  and  a  fire 
that  surpassed  theirs.  She  was  only  a  baby  still ;  she  had 
only  her  quick  ear  to  guide  her,  and  her  only  teacher 
was  such  inborn  instinct  as  makes  the  birds  sing  and  the 
young  kids  gambol. 

Yet  she  danced  with  a  wondrous  subtlety  and  inten- 
sity of  ardor  beyond  her  years ;  her  small  brown  limbs 
glancing  like  bronze  in  the  fire-glow,  the  sequins  flashing 
in  her  flying  hair,  and  her  form  flung  high  in  air,  like  a 
bird  on  the  wing,  or  a  leaf  on  the  wind  ;  never  still, 
never  ceasing  to  dart,  and  to  leap,  and  to  whirl,  and  to 
sway,  yet  always  with  a  sweet  dreamy  indolence,  even 
in  her  fiery  unrest. 

Taric  watched  her  under  his  bent  brow  until  the 
music  ceased,  and  she  dropped  on  the  grass  spent  and 
panting  like  a  swallow  after  a  long  ocean  flight. 

"  She  will  do,"  he  muttered. 

"  What  is  it  you  mean  with  the  child  ?"  some  women 
asked. 

Taric  laughed. 

"  The  little  vermin  is  good  for  a  gold  piece  or  two,"  he 
answered. 

Phratos  said  nothing,  but  he  heard. 

After  awhile  the  camp  was  still ;  the  gypsies  slept. 
Two  or  three  of  their  men  went  out  to  try  and  harry 
cattle  by  the  light  of  the  moon  if  they  should  be  in  luck; 
two  others  went  forth  to  set  snares  for  the  wood  par- 
tridges and  rabbits ;  the  rest  slumbered  soundly,  the 
dogs  curled  to  a  watching  sleep  of  vigilant  guard  in  their 
midst. 

Taric  alone  sat  by  the  dying  fire.  When  all  was  very 
quiet,  and  the  stars  were  clear  in  midnight  skies,  the 
woman  Zara  stole  out  of  her  tent  to  him. 

"  You  signed  to  me,"  she  said  to  him  in  a  low  voice. 
"  You  want  the  child  killed  ?» 

Taric  showed  his  white  teeth  like  a  WoK 

"  Not  I ;  what  should  I  gain  ?" 
6 


62  FOLLE-FARINE. 

"  What  is  it  you  want,  then,  with  her  ?" 

"  I  mean  to  take  her,  that  is  all.  See  here — a  month 
ago,  on  the  other  side  of  the  mountains,  I  met  a  fantoccini 
player.  It  was  at  a  wineshop,  hard  by  Luzarches.  He 
had  a  woman-child  with  him  who  danced  to  his  music, 
and  whom  the  people  praised  for  her  beauty,  and  who 
anticbed  like  a  dancing-dog,  and  who  made  a  great  deal 
of  silver.  We  got  friends,  he  and  I.  At  the  week's  end 
the  brat  died:  some  sickness  of  the  throat,  they  said. 
Her  master  tore  his  hair  and  raved ;  the  little  wretch  was 
worth  handfuls  of  coin  to  him.  For  such  another  he 
would  give  twelve  gold  pieces.  He  shall  have  her.  She 
will  dance  for  him  and  me ;  there  is  plenty  to  be  made  in 
that  way.  The  women  are  fools  over  a  handsome  child  ; 
they  open  their  larders  and  their  purses.  I  shall  take  her 
away  before  sunrise;  he  says  he  teaches  them  in  seven 
days,  by  starving  and  giving  the  stick.  She  will  dance 
while  she  is  a  child.  Later  on — there  are  the  theaters ; 
she  will  be  strong  and  handsome,  and  in  the  great  cities, 
now,  a  woman's  comeliness  is  as  a  mine  of  gold  ore.  I 
shall  take  her  away  by  sunrise. " 

"  To  sell  her  ?» 

The  hard  fierce  heart  of  Zara  rebelled  against  him  ;  she 
had  no  tenderness  save  for  her  own  offspring,  and  she  had 
maltreated  the  stray  child  many  a  time ;  yet  the  proud 
liberty  and  the  savage  chastity  of  her  race  were  roused 
against  him  by  his  words. 

Taric  laughed  again. 

"Surely  ;  why  not  ?  I  will  make  a  dancing-dog  of  her 
for  the  peasants'  pastime  ;  and  in  time  she  will  make 
dancing-dogs  of  the  nobles  and  the  princes  for  her  own 
sport.     It  is  a  brave  life — none  better." 

The  gypsy  woman  stood,  astonished  and  irresolute. 
If  he  had  flung  his  child  in  the  river,  or  thrown  her  off 
a  rock,  he  would  have  less  offended  the  instincts  and  pre- 
judices of  her  clan. 

11  What  will  Phratos  say  ?"  she  asked  at  length. 

"  Phratos  ?  A  rotten  lig  for  Phratos  !  What  can  he 
say — or  do  ?  The  little  beast  is  mine ;  I  can  wring  its 
neck  if  I  choose,  and  if  it  refuse  to  pipe  when  we  play  for 
it,  I  will." 


FOLLE-FARINE.  63 

The  woman  sought  in  vain  to  dissuade  him ;  he  was 
inflexible.  She  left  him" at  last,  telling  herself  that  it  was 
no  business  of  hers.  He  had  a  right  to  do  what  he  chose 
with  his  own.  So  went  and  lay  down  among  her 
brown-faced  boys,  and  was  indifferent,  and  slept. 

Taric  likewise  slept,  upon  a  pile  of  moss  under  the 
ledge  of  the  rock,  lulled  by  the  heat  of  the  fire,  which,  ere 
lying  down,  he  had  fed  with  fresh  boughs  of  resinous 
wood. 

When  all  was  quite  still,  and  his  deep  quiet  breathing 
told  that  his  slumber  was  one  not  easily  broken,  a  man 
softly  rose  from  the  ground  and  threw  off  a  mass  of  dead 
leaves  that  had  covered  him,  and  stood  erect,  a  dark, 
strange,  misshapen  figure,  in  the  moonlight:  it  was 
Phratos. 

He  had  heard,  and  understood  all  that  Taric  meant  for 
the  present  and  the  future  of  the  child :  and  he  knew  that 
when  Taric  vowed  to  do  a  thing  for  his  own  gain,  it  were 
easier  to  uproot  the  chain  of  the  Europa  than  to  turn  him 
aside  from  his  purpose. 

"It  was  my  doing!"  said  Phratos  to  himself  bitterly, 
as  he  stood  there,  and  his  heart  was  sick  and  sore  in  him, 
as  with  self-reproach  for  a  crime. 

He  thought  awhile,  standing  still  in  the  hush  of  the 
midnight;  then  he  went  softly,  with  a  footfall  that 
did  not  waken  a  dog,  and  lifted  up  the  skins  of  Zara's 
tent  as  they  hung  over  the  fir-poles.  The  moonbeams 
slanting  through  the  foliage  strayed  in,  and  showed  him 
the  woman,  sleeping  among  her  rosy  robust  children,  like 
a  mastiff  with  her  litter  of  tawny  pups ;  and  away  from 
them,  on  the  bare  ground  closer  to  the  entrance,  the 
slumbering  form  of  the  young  daughter  of  Taric. 

She  woke  as  he  touched  her,  opening  bright  bewildered 
eyes. 

"  Hush !  it  is  I,  Phratos,"  he  murmured  over  her,  and 
the  stifled  cry  died  on  her  lips. 

He  lifted  her  up  in  his  arms  and  left  the  tent  with  her, 
and  dropped  the  curtain  of  sheepskin,  and  went  out  into 
the  clear,  crisp,  autumn  night.  Her  eyes  had  closed 
again,  and  her  head  had  sunk  on  his  shoulder  heavy  with 
sleep ;  she  had  not  tried  to  keep  awake  one  moment  after 


64  FOLLE-FARINE. 

knowing  that  it  was  Pbratos  who  had  come  for  her ;  she 
loved  him,  and  in  his  hold  feared  nothing. 

Taric  lay  on  the  ledge  of  the  rock,  deaf  with  the  torpor 
of  a  half-drunken  slumber,  dreaming  gloomily;  his  hand 
playing  in  his  dreams  with  the  knife  that  was  thrust  in 
his  waistband. 

Pbratos  stepped  gently  past  him,  and  through  the  out- 
stretched forms  of  the  dogs  and  men,  and  across  the  died- 
out  embers  of  the  fire,  over  which  the  emptied  soup-kettle 
still  swung,  as  the  night-breeze  blew  to  and  fro  its  chain. 
No  one.  heard  him. 

He  went  out  from  their  circle  and  down  the  path  of  the 
gorge  in  silence,  carrying  the  child.  She  was  folded  in  a 
piece  of  sheepskin,  and  in  her  hair  there  were  still  the 
sequins.  They  glittered  in  the  white  light  as  he  went; 
as  the  wind  blew,  it  touched  the  chords  of  the  viol  on  his 
shoulder,  and  struck  a  faint,  musical,  sighing  sound  from 
them. 

"  Is  it  morning  ?"  the  child  murmured,  half  asleep. 

14  No,  dear ;  it  is  night,"  he  answered  her,  and  she  was 
content  and  slept  again — the  strings  of  the  viol  sending 
a  soft  whisper  in  her  d'".'vsy  ear,  each  time  that  the 
breeze  arose  and  swept  across  them. 

When  the  morning  came  it  found  him  far  on  his  road, 
leaving  behind  him  the  Liebana. 

There  followed  a  bright  month  of  autumn  weather. 
The  child  was  happy  as  she  had  never  been. 

They  moved  on  continually  through  the  plains  and  the 
fields,  the  hills  and  the  woods,  the  hamlets  and  the  cities; 
but  she  and  the  viol  were  never  weary.  They  rode  aloft 
whilst  he  toiled  on.  Yet  neither  was  he  weary,  for  the 
viol  murmured  in  the  wind,  and  the  child  laughed  in  the 
sunshine. 


FOLLE-FARWE.  65 


CHAPTER  V. 

It  was  late  in  the  year. 

The  earth  and  sky  were  a  blaze  of  russet  and  purple, 
and  scarlet  and  gold.  The  air  was  keen  and  swift,  and 
strong  like  wine.  A  summer  fragrance  blended  with  a 
winter  frost.  The  grape  harvest  had  been  gathered  in, 
and  had  been  plentiful,  and  the  people  were  liberal  and 
of  good  humor. 

Sometimes  before  a  wineshop  or  beneath  a  balcony,  or 
in  a  broad  market-square  at  evening,  Phratos  played  ;  and 
the  silver  and  copper  coins  were  dropped  fast  to  him. 
When  he  had  enough  by  him  to  get  a  crust  for  himself, 
and  milk  and  fruit  for  her,  he  did  not  pause  to  play,  but 
moved  on  resolutely  all  the  day,  resting  at  night  only. 

He  bought  her  a  little  garment  of  red  foxes'  furs  ;  her 
head  and  her  feet  were  bare.  She  bathed  in  clear  running 
waters,  and  slept  in  a  nest  of  hay.  She  saw  vast  towers, 
and  wondrous  spires,  and  strange  piles  of  wood  and  stone, 
and  rivers  spanned  by  arches,  and  great  forests  half  leaf- 
less, and  plains  red  in  stormy  sunset  light,  and  towns  that 
lay*  hid  in  soft  gold  mists  of  vapor ;  and  saw  all  these  as 
in  a  dream,  herself  borne  high  in  air,  wrapped  warm  in 
fur,  and  lulled  by  the  sweet  familiar  fraternity  of  the  old 
viol.  She  asked  no  questions,  she  was  content,  like  a 
mole  or  a  dormouse ;  she  was  not  beaten  or  mocked, 
she  was  never  hungry  nor  cold ;  no  one  cursed  her,  and 
she  was  with  Phratos. 

It  takes  time  to  go  on  foot  across  a  great  country,  and 
Phratos  was  nearly  always  on  foot. 

Now  and  then  he  gave  a  coin  or  two,  or  a  tune  or  two, 
for  a  lift  on  some  straw-laden  wagon,  or  some  mule-cart 
full  of  pottery  or  of  vegetables,  that  was  crawling  on  its 
slow  way  through  the  plains  of  the  marshy  lands,  or  the 
poplar-lined  leagues  of  the  public  highways.  But  as 
a  rule  he  plodded  on  by  himself,  shunning  the  people 
of  his  own  race,  and  shunned  in  return  by  the  ordinary 

G* 


66  FOLLE-FARINE. 

populace  of  the  places  through  which  he  traveled.  For 
they  knew  him  to  be  a  Spanish  gypsy  by  his  skin  and  his 
garb  and  his  language,  and  by  the  starry-eyed  Arab-faced 
child  who  ran  by  his  side  in  her  red  fur  and  her  flashing 
sequins. 

u  There  is  a  curse  written  against  all  honest  folk  on 
every  one  of  those  shaking  coins,"  the  peasants  muttered 
as  she  passed  them. 

She  did  not  comprehend  their  sayings,  for  she  knew 
none  but  her  gypsy  tongue,  and  that  only  very  imper- 
fectly; but  she  knew  by  their  glance  that  they  meant 
that  she  was  something  evil ;  and  she  gripped  tighter 
Phratos's  hand — half  terrified,  half  triumphant. 

The  weather  grew  colder  and  the  ground  harder.  The 
golden  and  scarlet  glories  of  the  south  and  of  the  west, 
their  red  leafage  and  purple  flowers,  gorgeous  sunsets  and 
leaping  waters,  gave  place  to  the  level  pastures,  pale  skies, 
leafless  woods,  and  dim  gray  tints  of  the  northerly  lands. 

The  frosts  became  sharp,  and  mists  that  came  from 
unseen  seas  enveloped  them.  There  were  marvelous  old 
towns;  cathedral  spires  that  arose,  ethereal  as  vapor; 
still  dusky  cities,  aged  with  many  centuries,  that  seemed 
to  sleep  eternally  in  the  watery  halo  of  the  fog ;  green 
cultivated  hills,  from  whose  smooth  brows  the  earth- 
touching  clouds  seemed  never  to  lift  themselves ;  straight 
sluggish  streams,  that  flowed  with  leisurely  laziness 
through  broad  flat  meadow-lands,  white  with  snow  and 
obscure  with  vapor.  These  were  for  what  they  ex- 
changed the  pomp  of  dying  foliage,  the  glory  of  crimson 
fruits,  the  fierce  rush  of  the  mistral,  the  odors  of  the 
nowel-born  violets,  the  fantastic  shapes  of  the  aloes  and 
olives  raising  their  dark  spears  and  their  silvery  network 
against  the  amber  fires  of  a  winter  dawn  in  the  rich 
southwest. 

The  child  was  chilled,  oppressed,  vaguely  awestruck, 
and  disquieted ;  but  she  said  nothing ;  Phratos  was 
there  and  the  viol. 

She  missed  the  red  forests  and  the  leaping  torrents, 
and  the  prickly  fruits,  and  the  smell  of  the  violets  and 
the  vineyards,  and  the  wild  shapes  of  the  cactus,  and  the 
old   myrtles  that  were   hoary  and    contorted  with  age. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  61 

But  she  did  not  complain  nor  ask  any  questions;   she 
had  supreme  faith  in  Phratos. 

One  night,  at  the  close  of  a  black  day  in  midwinter,  the 
sharpest  and  hardest  in  cold  that  they  had  ever  encoun- 
tered, they  passed  through  a  little  town  whose  roadways 
were  mostly  canals,  and  whose  spires  and  roofs  and 
pinnacles  and  turrets  and  towers  were  all  beautiful  with 
the  poetry  and  the  majesty  of  a  long-perished  age. 

The  day  had  been  bitter ;  there  was  snow  every- 
where ;  great  blocks  of  ice  choked  up  the  water ;  the 
belfry  chimes  rang  shrilly  through  the  rarefied  air;  the 
few  folks  that  were  astir  were  wrapped  in  wool  or  sheep- 
skin ;  through  the  casements  there  glowed  the  ruddy 
flush  of  burning  logs;  and  the  muffled  watchmen  pass- 
ing to  and  fro  in  antique  custom  on  their  rounds  called 
out,  under  the  closed  houses,  that  it  was  eight  of  the 
night  in  a  heavy  snowstorm. 

Phratos  paused  in  the  town  at  an  old  hostelry  to  give 
the  child  a  hot  drink  of  milk  and  a  roll  of  rye  bread. 
There  he  asked  the  way  to  the  wood  and  the  mill  of 
Ypres. 

They  told  it  him  sullenly  and  suspiciously :  since  for  a 
wild  gypsy  of  Spain  the  shrewd,  thrifty,  plain  people 
of  the  north  had  no  liking. 

He  thanked  them,  and  went  on  his  way,  out  of  the 
barriers  of  the  little  town  along  a  road  by  the  river  to- 
wards the  country. 

"Art  thou  cold,  dear?"  he  asked  her,  with  more 
tenderness  than  common  in  his  voice. 

The  child  shivered  under  her  little  fur-skin,  which 
would  not  keep  out  the  searching  of  the  hurricane  and 
the  driving  of  the  snowflakes  ;  but  she  drew  her  breath 
quickly,  and  answered  him,  "  No." 

They  came  to  a  little  wood,  leafless  and  black  in  the 
gloomy  night ;  a  dead  crow  swung  in  their  faces  on  a 
swaying  pear-tree;  the  roar  of  the  mill-stream  loudly 
tilled  what  otherwise  would  have  been  an  intense  si- 
lence. 

He  made  his  way  in  by  a  little  wicket,  through  an 
orchard  and  through  a  garden,  and  so  to  the  front  of  the 
mill-house.     The  shutters  were*  not  closed ;  through  the 


68  FOLLE-FARINE. 

driving  of  the  snow  he  could  see  within.  It  looked  to 
him — a  houseless  wanderer  from  his  youth  up — strangely 
warm  and  safe  and  still. 

An  old  man  sat  on  one  side  of  the  wide  hearth ;  an 
old  woman, who  span,  on  the  other;  the  spinning-wheel 
turned,  the  thread  flew,  the  logs  smoked  and  flamed,  the 
red  glow  played  on  the  blue  and  white  tiles  of  the  chim- 
ney-place, and  danced  on  the  pewter  and  brass  on  the 
shelves ;  from  the  rafters  there  hung  smoked  meats  and 
dried  herbs  and  strings  of  onions ;  there  was  a  crucifix, 
and  below  it  a  little  Nativity,  in  wax  and  carved  wood. 

He  could  not  tell  that  the  goodly  stores  were  only 
gathered  there  to  be  sold  later  at  famine  prices  to  a  starv- 
ing peasantry ;  he  could  not  tell  that  the  wooden  god 
was  only  worshiped  in  a  blind,  bigoted,  brutal  selfish- 
ness, that  desired  to  save  its  own  soul,  and  to  leave  all 
other  souls  in  eternal  damnation. 

He  could  not  tell ;  he  only  saw  old  age  and  warmth 
and  comfort;  and  what  the  people  who  hooted  him  as  a 
heathen  called  the  religion  of  Love. 

11  They  will  surely  be  good  to  her  ?"  he  thought.  "  Old 
people,  and  prosperous,  and  alone  by  their  fireside." 

It  seemed  that  they  must  be  so. 

Anyway,  there  was  no  other  means  to  save  her  from 
Taric. 

His  heart  was  sore  within  him,  for  he  had  grown  to 
love  the  child ;  and  to  the  vagrant  instincts  of  bis  race 
the  life  of  the  house  and  of  the  hearth  seemed  like  the 
life  of  the  cage  for  the  bird.  Yet  Phratos,  who  was  not 
altogether  as  his  own  people  were,  but  had  thought  much 
and  often  in  his  own  wild  way,  knew  that  such  a  life  was 
the  best  for  a  woman-child, — and.  above  all,  for  a  woman- 
child  who  had  such  a  sire  as  Taric. 

To  keep  her  with  himself  was  impossible.  He  had 
always  dwelt  with  his  tribe,  having  no  life  apart  from 
theirs;  and  even  if  he  had  left  them,  wherever  he  had 
wandered,  there  would  Taric  have  followed,  and  found 
him,  and  claimed  the  child  by  his  right  of  blood.  There 
was  no  other  way  to  secure  her  from  present  misery  and 
future  shame,  save  only  this ;  to  place  her  with  her 
mother's  people.  » 


FOLLE-FARINE.  69 

She  stood  beside  him,  still  and  silent,  gazing  through 
the  snowflakes  at  the  warmth  of  the  mill-kitchen  within. 

He  stooped  over  her,  and  pushed  between  her  fur  gar- 
ment and  her  skin  the  letter  he  had  found  on  the  breast 
of  the  dead  woman  in  the  Liebana. 

"  Thou  wilt  go  in  there  to  the  old  man  yonder,  and 
sleep  by  that  pleasant  fire  to-night,"  he  murmured  to  her. 
"  And  thou  wilt  be  good  and  gentle,  and  even  as  thou  art 
to  me  always ;  and  to-morrow  at  noontide  I  will  come 
and  see  how  it  fares  with  thee." 

Her  small  hands  tightened  upon  his. 

14 1  will  not  go  without  thee,"  she  muttered  in  the  broken 
tongue  of  the  gypsy  children. 

There  were  food  and  milk,  fire  and  shelter,  safety  from 
the  night  and  the  storm  there,  she  saw ;  but  these  were 
naught  to  her  without  Phratos.  She  struggled  against 
her  fate  as  the  young  bird  struggles  against  being  thrust 
into  the  cage, — not  knowing  what  captivity  means,  and 
yet  afraid  of  it  and  rebelling  by  instinct. 

He  took  her  up  in  his  arms,  and  pressed  her  close  to 
him,  and  for  the  first  time  kissed  her.  For  Phratos, 
though  tender  to  her,  had  no  woman's  foolishness,  but  had 
taught  her  to  be  hardy  and  strong,  and  to  look  for  neither 
caresses  nor  compassion — knowing  well  that  to  the  love- 
child  of  Taric  in  her  future  years  the  first  could  only 
mean  shame,  and  the  last  could  only  mean  alms,  which 
would  be  shame  likewise. 

"  Go,  dear,"  he  said  softly  to  her ;  and  then  he  struck 
with  his  staff  on  the  wooden  door,  and,  lifting  its  latch, 
unclosed  it;  and  thrust  the  child  forward,  ere  she  could 
resist,  into  the  darkness  of  the  low  entrance-place. 

Then  he  turned  and  went  swiftly  himself  through  the 
orchard  and  wood  into  the  gloom  and  the  storm  of  the 
night. 

He  knew  that  to  show  himself  to  a  northern  house- 
holder were  to  do  her  evil  and  hurt;  for  between  the 
wanderer  of  the  Spanish  forests  and  the  peasant  of  the 
Norman  pastures  there  could  be  only  defiance,  mistrust, 
and  disdain. 

"I  will  see  how  it  is  with  her  to-morrow,"  he  said  to 
himself  as  he  faced  again  the  wind  and  the  sleet.     "  If  it 


70  FOLLE-FAR1NE, 

be  well  with  her — let  it  be  well.  If  not,  she  must  come 
forth  with  me,  and  we  must  seek  some  lair  where  her  wolf- 
sire  shall  not  prowl  and  discover  her.  But  it  will  be  hard 
to  find ;  for  the  vengeance  of  Taric  is  swift  of  foot  and 
has  a  far-stretching  hand  and  eyes  that  are  sleepless." 

And  his  heart  was  heavy  in  him  as  he  went.  He  had 
done  what  seemed  to  him  just  and  due  to  the  child  and 
her  mother ;  he  had  been  true  to  the  vow  he  had  made 
answering  the  mute  prayer  of  the  sightless  dead  eyes ; 
he  had  saved  the  flesh  of  the  child  from  the  whip  of  the 
trainer,  and  the  future  of  the  child  from  the  shame  of  the 
brothel ;  he  had  done  thus  much  in  saving  her  from  her 
father,  and  he  had  done  it  in  the  only  way  that  was  pos- 
sible to  him. 

Yet  his  heart  was  heavy  as  he  went ;  and  it  seemed  to 
him  even  as  though  he  had  thrust  some  mountain-bird 
with  pinions  that  would  cleave  the  clouds,  and  eyes  that 
would  seek  the  sun,  and  a  song  that  would  rise  with  the 
dawn,  and  a  courage  that  would  breast  the  thunder,  down 
into  the  darkness  of  a  trap,  to  be  shorn  and  crippled  and 
silenced  for  evermore. 

"I  will  see  her  to-morrow,"  he  told  himself;  restless 
with  a  vague  remorse,  as  though  the  good  he  had  done 
had  been  evil. 

But  when  the  morrow  dawned  there  had  happened 
that  to  Phratos  which  forbade  him  to  see  whether  it  were 
well  with  her  that  day  or  any  day  in  all  the  many  years 
that  came. 

For  Phratos  that  night,  being  blinded  and  shrouded  in 
the  storm  of  snow,  lost  such  slender  knowledge  as  be  had 
of  that  northern  country,  and  wandered  far  afield,  not 
knowing  where  he  was  in  the  wide  white  desert,  on 
which  no  single  star-ray  shone. 

The  violence  of  the  storm  grew  with  the  hours.  The 
land  was  a  sheet  of  snow.  The  plains  were  dim  and 
trackless  as  a  desert.  Sheep  were  frozen  in  their  folds, 
and  cattle  drowned  amidst  the  ice  in  the  darkness.  All 
lights  were  out,  and  the  warning  peals  of  the  bells  were 
drowned  in  the  tempest  of  the  winds. 

The  land  was  strange  to  him,  and  he  lost  all  knowl- 
edge where  he  was.     Above,  beneath,  around,  were  the 


FOLLE-FARINK  71 

dense  white  rolling  clouds  of  snow.  Now  and  then 
through  the  tumult  of  the  hurricane  there  was  blown  a 
strange  harsh  burst  of  jangled  chimes  that  wailed  a  mo- 
ment loudly  on  the  silence  and  then  died  again. 

At  many  doors  he  knocked :  the  doors  of  little  lonely 
places  standing  in  the  great  colorless  waste. 

But  each  door,  being  opened  cautiously,  was  with 
haste  shut  in  his  face  again. 

"  It  is  a  gypsy,"  the  people  muttered,  and  were  afraid  ; 
and  they  drew  their  bars  closer  and  huddled  together  in 
their  beds,  and  thanked  their  saints  that  they  were  safe 
beneath  a  roof. 

He  wrapped  his  sheepskin  closer  round  him  and  set 
his  face  against  the  blast 

A  hundred  times  he  strove  to  set  his  steps  backwards 
to  the  town,  and  a  hundred  times  he  failed ;  and  moved 
only  round  and  round  vainly,  never  escaping  the  maze  of 
the  endless  white  fields. 

Now  the  night  was  long,  and  he  was  weakly. 

In  the  midst  of  the  fields  there  was  a  cross,  and  at  the 
head  of  the  cross  hung  a  lantern.  The  wind  tossed  the 
light  to  and  fro.  It  flickered  on  the  head  of  a  woman. 
She  lay  in  the  snow,  and  her  hand  grasped  his  foot  as 
he  passed  her. 

"I  am  dead,"  she  said  to  him:  "  dead  of  hunger. 
But  the  lad  lives — save  him." 

And  as  she  spoke,  her  lips  closed  together,  her  throat 
rattled,  and  she  died. 

The  boy  slept  at  her  feet,  and  babbled  in  his  sleep,  de- 
lirious. 

Phratos  stooped  down  and  raised  him.  He  was  a 
child  of  eight  years,  and  worn  with  famine  and  fever, 
and  his  gaunt  eyes  stared  hideously  up  at  the  driving 
snow. 

Phratos  folded  him  in  his  arms,  and  went  on  with  him: 
the  snow  had  nearly  covered  the  body  of  his  mother. 

All  around  were  the  fields.  There  was  no  light,  ex- 
cept from  the  lantern  on  the  cross.  A  few  sheep  huddled 
near  without  a  shepherd.  The  stillness  was  intense. 
The  bells  had  ceased  to  ring  or  he  had  wandered  far  from 
the  sound  of  them. 


*12  FOLLE-FARINE. 

The  lad  was  senseless;  he  muttered  drearily  foolish 
words  of  fever;  his  limbs  hung  in  a  dead  weight;  his 
teeth  chattered.  Phratos,  bearing  him,  struggled  on: 
the  snow  was  deep  and  drifted  heavily ;  every  now  and 
then  he  stumbled  and  plunged  to  his  knees  in  a  rift  of 
earth  or  in  a  shallow  pool  of  ice. 

At  last  his  strength,  feeble  at  all  times,  failed  him  ; 
his  arms  could  bear  their  burden  no  longer ;  he  let  the 
young  boy  slip  from  his  hold  upon  the  ground;  and 
stood,  breathless  and  broken,  with  the  snowflakes  beating 
on  him. 

"The  woman  trusted  me,"  he  thought;  she  was  a 
stranger,  she  was  a  beggar,  she  was  dead.  She  had  no 
bond  upon/ him.  Neither  could  she  ever  bear  witness 
against  him.     Yet  he  was  loyal  to  her. 

He  unwound  the  sheepskin  that  he  wore,  and  stripped 
himself  of  it  and  folded  it  about  the  sick  child,  and  with 
a  slow  laborious  effort  drew  the  little  body  away  under 
the  frail  shelter  of  a  knot  of  furze,  and  wrapped  it 
closely  round,  and  left  it  there. 

Jt  was  all  that  he  could  do. 

Then,  with  no  defense  between  him  and  the  driving 
cold,  he  strove  once  more  to  find  his  road. 

It  was  quite  dark ;  quite  still. 

The  snow  fell  ceaselessly ;  the  white  wide  land  was 
patchless  as  the  sea. 

He  stumbled  on,  as  a  mule  may  which  being  blind  and 
bruised  }ret  holds  its  way  from  the  sheer  instinct  of  its 
sad  dumb  patience.  His  veins  were  frozen  ;  his  beard 
was  ice  ;  the  wind  cut  his  flesh  like  a  scourge ;  a  sickly 
dreamy  sleepiness  stole  on  him. 

He  knew  well  what  it  meant. 

He  tried  to  rouse  himself;  he  was  young,  and  his  life 
had  its  sweetness ;  and  there  were  faces  he  would  fain 
have  seen  again,  and  voices  whose  laughter  he  would 
fain  have  heard. 

He  drew  the  viol  round  and  touched  its  strings ;  but 
his  frozen  fingers  had  lost  their  cunning,  and  the  soul  of 
the  music  was  chilled  and  dumb:  it  only  sighed  in 
answer. 


FOLLE-FARWE.  ?3 

He  kissed  it  softly  as  he  would  have  kissed  a  woman's 
lips,  and  put  it  in  his  bosom.     It  had  all  his  youth  in  it. 

Then  he  stumbled  onward  yet  again,  feebly,  being  a 
cripple,  and  cold  to  the  bone,  and  pierced  with  a  million 
thorns  of  pain. 

There  was  no  light  anywhere. 

The  endless  wilderness  of  the  white  plowed  lands 
stretched  all  around  him;  where  the  little  hamlets  clus- 
tered the  storm  hid  them  ;  no  light  could  penetrate  the 
denseness  of  that  changeless  gloom  ;  and  the  only  sound 
that  rose  upon  the  ghastly  silence  was  the  moaning  of 
some  perishing  flock  locked  in  a  flood  of  ice,  and  deserted 
by  its  shepherd. 

But  what  he  saw  and  what  he  heard  were  not  these 
going  barefoot  and  blindfold  to  his  death,  the  things  of 
his  own  land  were  with  him ;  the  golden  glories  of  sun 
sets  of  paradise ;  the  scarlet  blaze  of  a  wilderness  of 
flowers ;  the  sound  of  the  fountains  at  midnight ;  the 
glancing  of  the  swift  feet  in  the  dances ;  the  sweetness 
of  songs  sad  as  death  sung  in  the  desolate  courts  of  old 
palaces ;  the  deep  dreamy  hush  of  white  moons  shining 
through  lines  of  palms  straight  on  a  silvery  sea. 

These  arose  and  drifted  before  him,  and  he  ceased  to 
suffer  or  to  know,  and  sleep  conquered  him ;  he  dropped 
down  on  the  white  earth  noiselessly  and  powerlessly  as  a 
leaf  sinks ;  the  snow  fell  and  covered  him. 

When  the  morning  broke,  a  peasant,  going  to  his  labor 
in  the  fields,  while  the  stormy  winter  sun  rose  red  over 
the  whitened  world,  found  both  his  body  and  the  child's. 

The  boy  was  warm  and  living  still  beneath  the  shelter 
of  the  sheepskin  :  Phratos  was  dead. 

The  people  succored  the  child,  and  nursed  and  fed  him 
so  that  his  life  was  saved  ;  but  to  Phratos  they  only  gave 
such  burial  as  the  corby  gives  the  stricken  deer. 

11  It  is  only  a  gypsy ;  let  him  lie,"  they  said  ;  and  they 
left  him  there,  and  the  snow  kept  him. 

His  viol  they  robbed  him  of,  and  cast  it  as  a  plaything 
to  their  children. 

But  the  children  could  make  no  melody  from  its  dumb 
strings.  For  the  viol  was  faithful ;  and  its  music  was 
dead  too. 

T 


74  FOLLE-FARINE. 

And  his  own  land  and  his  own  people  knew  him  never 
again ;  and  never  again  at  evening  was  the  voice  of  his 
viol  heard  in  the  stillness,  and  never  again  did  the  young 
men  and  maidens  dance  to  his  bidding,  and  the  tears 
and  the  laughter  rise  and  fall  at  his  will,  and  the  beasts 
and  the  birds  frisk  and  sing  at  his  coming,  and  the  chil- 
dren in  his  footsteps  cry,  "  Lo,  it  is  summer,  since  Phratos 
is  here ! " 


BOOK    II. 


CHAPTER  I. 

The  hottest  sun  of  a  hot  summer  shone  on  a  straight 
white  dusty  road. 

An  old  man  was  breaking  stones  by  the  wayside ;  he 
was  very  old,  very  bent,  very  lean,  worn  by  nigh  a  hun- 
dred years  if  he  had  been  worn  by  one ;  but  he  struck 
yet  with  a  will,  and  the  flints  flew  in  a  thousand  pieces 
under  his  hammer,  as  though  the  youth  and  the  force  of 
nineteen  years  instead  of  ninety  were  at  work  on  them. 

When  the  noon  bell  rang  from  a  little  odd  straight 
steeple,  with  a  slanting  roof,  that  peered  out  of  the  trees 
to  the  westward,  he  laid  his  hammer  aside,  took  off  his 
brass-plated  cap,  wiped  his  forehead  of  its  heat  aud  dust, 
sat  down  on  his  pile  of  stones,  took  out  a  hard  black  crust 
and  munched  with  teeth  that  were  still  strong  and  wiry. 

The  noontide  was  very  quiet;  the  heat  was  intense,  for 
there  had  been  no  rainfall  for  several  weeks ;  there  was 
one  lark  singing  high  up  in  the  air,  with  its  little  breast 
lifted  to  the  sun ;  but  all  the  other  birds  wTere  mute  and  in- 
visible, doubtless  hidden  safely  in  some  delicious  shadow, 
swinging  drowsily  on  tufts  of  linden  bloom,  or  under- 
neath the  roofing  of  broad  chestnut  leaves. 

The  road  on  either  side  was  lined  by  the  straight  forms 
of  endless  poplars,  standing  side  by  side  in  sentinel.  The 
fields  were  all  ablaze  around  on  every  side  with  the  gold 
of  ripening  corn  or  mustard,  and  the  scarlet  flame  of  in- 
numerable poppies. 

Here  and  there  they  were  broken  by  some  little  house, 
white  or  black,  or  painted  in  bright  colors,  which  lifted 
up  among  its  leaves  a  little  tower  like  a  sugar-loaf,  or  a 


76  FOLLE-FARINE. 

black  gable,  and  a  pointed  arch  beneath  it.  Now  and 
then  they  were  divided  by  rows  of  trees  standing  breath- 
less in  the  heat,  or  breadths  of  apple  orchards,  some  with 
fruits  ruby  red,  some  with  fruits  as  yet  green  as  their 
foliage. 

Through  it  all  the  river  ran,  silver  in  the  light,  with  shal- 
low fords,  where  the  deep-flanked  bullocks  drank ;  and 
ever  and  anon  an  -ancient  picturesque  bridge  of  wood, 
time-bronzed  and  moss-imbedded. 

The  old  man  did  not  look  round  once  ;  he  had  been  on 
these  roads  a  score  of  years;  the  place  had  to  him  the 
monotony  and  colorlessness  which  all  long  familiar  scenes 
wear  to  the  eyes  that  are  weary  of  them. 

He  was  ninety-five  ;  he  had  to  labor  for  his  living  ;  he 
ate  black  bread ;  he  had  no  living  kith  or  kin ;  no  friend 
save  in  the  mighty  legion  of  the  dead ;  he  sat  in  the 
scorch  of  the  sun ;  he  hated  the  earth  and  the  sky,  the 
air  and  the  landscape:  why  not  ? 

They  had  no  loveliness  for  him  ;  he  only  knew  that  the 
flies  stung  him,  and  that  the  red  ants  could  crawl  through 
the  holes  in  his  shoes,  and  bite  him  sharply  with  their 
little  piercing  teeth. 

He  sat  in  such  scanty  shade  as  the  tall  lean  poplar 
gave,  munching  his  hard  crusts ;  he  had  a  line  keen  pro- 
file and  a  long  white  beard  that  were  cut  as  sharply  as 
an  intaglio  against  the  golden  sunlight,  in  which  the 
gnats  were  dancing.  His  eyes  were  fastened  on  the  dust 
as  he  ate  ;  blue  piercing  eyes  which  had  still  something 
of  the  fire  of  their  youth;  and  his  lips  under  the  white 
hair  moved  a  little  now  and  then,  half  audibly. 

His  thoughts  were  with  the  long  dead  years  of  an  un- 
forgotten  time — a  time  that  will  be  remembered  as  long 
as  the  earth  shall  circle  round  the  sun. 

With  the  present  he  had  nothing  to  do ;  he  worked  to 
satisfy  the  lingering  cravings  of  a  body  that  age  seemed 
to  have  lost  all  power  to  kill ;  he  worked  because  he  was 
too  much  of  a  man  still  to  beg,  and  because  suicide  looked 
to  his  fancy  like  a  weakness.  But  life  for  all  that  was 
over  with  him ;  life  in  the  years  of  his  boyhood  had  been 
a  thing  so  splendid,  so  terrible,  so  drunken,  so  divine,  so 
tragic,  so  intense,  that  the  world  seemed  now  to  him  to 


FOLLE-FARINE.  77 

have  grown  pale  and  gray  and  pulseless,  with  no  sap  in 
its  vines,  no  hue  in  its  sans,  no  blood  in  its  humanity. 

For  his  memory  held  the  days  of  Thermidor  ;  the  weeks 
of  the  White  Terror;  the  winter  dawn,  when  the  drums 
rolled  out  a  King's  threnody;  the  summer  nights,  when 
all  the  throats  of  Paris  cried  "  Marengo  1" 

He  had  lived  in  the  wondrous  awe  of  that  abundant 
time  when  every  hour  was  an  agony  or  a  victory,  when 
every  woman  was  a  martyr  or  a  bacchanal ;  when  the 
same  scythe  that  had  severed  the  flowering  grasses, 
served  also  to  cleave  the  fair  breasts  of  the  mother,  the 
tender  throat  of  the  child ;  when  the  ground  was  purple 
with  the  blue  blood  of  men  as  with  the  juices  of  out- 
trodden  grapes,  and  when  the  waters  were  white  with  the 
bodies  of  virgins  as  with  the  moon-fed  lilies  of  summer. 
And  now  he  sat  here  by  the  wayside  in  the  dust  and  the 
sun,  only  feeling  the  sting  of  the  fly  and  the  bite  of  the 
ant ;  and  the  world  seemed  dead  to  him,  because  so  long 
ago,  though  his  body  still  lived  on,  his  soul  had  cursed 
God  and  died. 

Through  the  golden  motes  of  the  dancing  air  and  of 
the  quivering  sunbeams,  whilst  high  above  the  lark  sang 
on,  there  came  along  the  road  a  girl. 

She  was  bare-footed,  and  bare-throated,  4ithe  of  move- 
ment, and  straight  and  supple  as  one  who  passed  her  life 
on  the  open  lands  and  was  abroad  in  all  changes  of  the 
weather.  She  walked  with  the  free  and  fearless  measure 
of  the  countrywomen  of  Rome  or  the  desert-born  women 
of  Nubia ;  she  had  barely  completed  her  sixteenth  year, 
but  her  bosom  and  limbs  were  full  and  iirm,  and  moulded 
with  almost  all  the  luxuriant  splendor  of  maturity ;  her 
head  was  not  covered  after  the  fashion  of  the  country,  but 
had  a  scarlet  kerchief  wound  about.  On  it  she  bore  a  flat 
basket,  tilled  high  with  fruits  and  herbs  and  flowers ;  a 
mass  of  color  and  of  blossom,  through  which  her  dark 
level  brows  and  her  great  eyes,  blue-black  as  a  tempestuous 
night,  looked  out,  set  straight  against  the  sun. 

She  came  on,  treading  down  the  dust  with  her  long  and 
slender  feet,  that  were  such  feet  as  a  sculptor  would  give 
to  his  Cleopatra  or  his  Phryne.  Her  face  was  grave, 
shadowed,  even  fierce  ;  and  her  mouth,  though  scarlet  as 

1* 


78  FOLLE-FARINE. 

a  berry  and  full  and  curled,  had  its  lips  pressed  close  on 
one  another,  like  the  lips  of  one  who  has  long  kept  silence, 
and  may  keep  it — until  death. 

As  she  saw  the  old  man  her  eyes  changed  and  lightened 
with  a  smile  which  for  the  moment  banished  all  the  gloom 
and  savage  patience  from  her  eyes,  and  made  them  mel- 
low and  lustrous  as  a  southern  sun. 

She  paused  before  him,  and  spoke,  showing  her  beau- 
tiful white  teeth,  small  and  even,  like  rows  of  cowry 
shells. 

"You  are  well,  Marcellin  ?" 

The  old  man  started,  and  looked  up  with  a  certain 
gladness  on  his  own  keen  visage,  which  had  lost  all  ex- 
pression save  such  as  an  intense  and  absorbed  retrospec- 
tion will  lend. 

"  Fool  1"  he  made  answer,  harshly  yet  not  unkindly. 
"  When  will  you  know  that  so  long  as  an  old  man  lives 
so  long  it  cannot  be  *  well '  with  him  ?" 

"  Need  one  be  a  man,  or  old,  to  answer  so  ?" 

She  spoke  in  the  accent  and  the  language  of  the  prov- 
ince, but  with  a  voice  rich  and  pure  and  cold ;  not  the 
voice  of  the  north,  or  of  any  peasantry. 

She  put  her  basket  down  from  off  her  head,  and  leaned 
against  the  trunk  of  the  poplar  beside  him,  crossing  her 
arms  upon  her  bare  chest. 

"  To  the  young  everything  is  possible ;  to  the  old 
nothing,"  he  said  curtly. 

Her  eyes  gleamed  with  a  thirsty  longing ;  she  made 
him  no  reply. 

He  broke  off  half  his  dry  bread  and  tendered  it  to  her. 
She  shook  her  head  and  motioned  it  away;  yet  she  was 
as  sharp-hungered  as  any  hawk  that  has  hunted  all 
through  the  night  and  the  woods,  and  has  killed  nothing. 
The  growing  life,  the  superb  strength,  the  lofty  stature  of 
her  made  her  need  constant  nourishment,  as  young  trees 
need  it ;  and  she  was  fed  as  scantily  as  a  blind  beggar's 
dog,  and  less  willingly  than  a  galley-slave. 

The  kindly  air  had  fed  her  richly,  strongly,  continually ; 
that  was  all. 

"  Possible !"  she  said  slowly,  after  awhile.  "  What  is 
'possible'?     I  do  not  understand." 


F0LLE-FAR1NE.  79 

The  old  man,  Marcellin,  smiled  grimly. 

"  You  see  that  lark  ?  It  soars  there,  and  sings  there. 
It  is  possible  that  a  fowler  may  hide  in  the  grasses ;  it  is 
possible  that  it  may  be  shot  as  it  sings  ;  it  is  possible  that 
it  may  have  the  honor  to  die  in  agony,  to  grace  a  rich 
man's  table.     You  see?" 

She  mused  a  moment;  her  brain  was  rapid  in  intuitive 
perception,  but  barren  of  all  culture ;  it  took  her  many 
moments  to  follow  the  filmy  track  of  a  metaphorical 
utterance. 

But  by  degrees  she  saw  his  meaning,  and  the  shadow 
settled  over  her  face  again. 

"The  'possible,' then,  is  only — the  worse?"  she  said 
slowly. 

The  old  man  smiled  still  grimly. 

"Nay;  our  friends  the  priests  say  there  is  a  'possible' 
which  will  give — one  day — the  fowler  who  kills  the  lark 
the  wings  of  the  lark,  and  the  lark's  power  to  sing  Laus 
Deo  in  heaven.     I  do  not  say — they  do." 

"  The  priests  J"  All  the  scorn  of  which  her  curved  lips 
were  capable  curled  on  them,  and  a  deep  hate  gathered  in 
her  eyes — a  hate  that  was  unfathomable  and  mute. 

"Then  there  is  no  'possible'  for  me,"  she  said  bitterly, 
"  if  so  be  that  priests  hold  the  gifts  of  it  ?" 

Marcellin  looked  up  at  her  from  under  his  bushy  white 
eyebrows ;  a  glance  fleet  and  keen  as  the  gleam  of  blue 
steel. 

"  Yes,  there  is,"  he  said  curtly.  "  You  are  a  woman- 
child,  and  have  beauty :  the  devil  will  give  you  one." 

"Always  the  devil  1"  she  muttered.  There  was  im- 
patience in  her  echo  of  the  words,  and  yet  there  was  an 
awe  also  as  of  one  who  uses  a  name  that  is  mighty  and 
full  of  majesty,  although  familiar. 

"  Always  the  devil  1"  repeated  Marcellin.  "  For  the 
world  is  always  of  men." 

His  meaning  this  time  lay  too  deep  for  her,  and  passed 
her ;  she  stood  leaning  against  the  poplar,  with  her  head 
bent  and  her  form  motionless  and  golden  in  the  sunlight 
like  a  statue  of  bronze. 

"If  men  be  devils  they  are  my  brethren,"  she  said  sud- 
denly ;  "why  do  they,  then,  so  hate  me?" 


80  FOLLE-FAR1NE. 

The  old  man  stroked  his  beard. 

11  Because  Fraternity  is  Hate.  Cain  said  so  ;  but  G-od 
would  not  believe  him." 

She  mused  over  the  saying;  silent  still. 

The  lark  dropped  down  from  heaven,  suddenly  falling 
through  the  air,  mute.  It  had  been  struck  by  a  sparrow- 
hawk,  which  flashed  back  against  the  azure  of  the  skies 
and  the  white  haze  of  the  atmosphere ;  and  which  flew 
down  in  the  track  of  the  lark,  and  seized  it  ere  it 
gained  the  shelter  of  the  grass,  and  bore  it  away  within 
his  talons. 

Marcellin  pointed  to  it  with  his  pipe-stem. 

"You  see,  there  are  many  forms  of  the  'possible'- n 

"  When  it  means  Death,"  she  added. 

The  old  man  took  his  pipe  back  and  smoked. 

"  Of  course.     Death  is  the  key-note  of  creation." 

Again  she  did  not  comprehend  ;  a  puzzled  pain  clouded 
the  luster  of  her  eyes. 

"  But  the  lark  praised  God — why  should  it  be  so  dealt 
with  ?" 

Marcellin  smiled  grimly. 

"  Abel  was  praising  God  ;  but  that  did  not  turn  aside 
the  steel." 

She  was  silent  yet  again ;  he  had  told  her  that  old 
story  of  the  sons  born  of  Eve,  and  the  one  whom,  hearing 
it,  she  had  understood  and  pitied  had  been  Cain. 

At  that  moment,  through  the  roadway  that  wound 
across  the  meadows  and  through  the  corn  lands  and  the 
trees,  there  came  in  sight  a  gleam  of  scarlet  that  was  not 
from  the  poppies,  a  flash  of  silver  that  was  not  from  the 
river,  a  column  of  smoke  that  was  not  from  the  weeds 
that  burned  on  the  hillside. 

There  came  a  moving  cloud,  with  a  melodious  murmur 
softly  rising  from  it ;  a  cloud  that  moved  between  the 
high  flowering  hedges,  the  tall  amber  wheat,  the  slender 
poplars,  and  the  fruitful  orchards  ;  a  cloud  that  grew  larger 
and  clearer  as  it  drew  more  near  to  them,  and  left  the  green 
water-meadows  and  the  winding  field-paths  for  the  great 
highroad. 

It  was  a  procession  of  the  Church. 

It  drew  closer  and  closer  by  slow  imperceptible  degrees, 


FOLLE-FARINE.  g'l 

until  it  approached  them ;  the  old  man  sat  upright,  not 
taking  his  cap  from  his  head  nor  his  pipe  from  his  mouth  ; 
the  young  girl  ceased  to  lean  for  rest  against  the  tree,  and 
stood  with  her  arms  crossed  on  her  breast. 

The  Church  passed  them  ;  the  gilt  crucifix  held  aloft,  the 
scarlet  and  the  white  of  the  floating  robes  catching  the 
sunlight ;  the  silver  chains  and  the  silver  censers  gleam- 
ing, the  fresh  young  voices  of  the  singing  children  cleav- 
ing the  air  like  a  rush  of  wind ;  the  dark  shorn  faces 
of  the  priests  bowed  over  open  books,  the  tender  sound 
of  little  bells  ringing  across  the  low  deep  monotony  of 
prayer. 

The  Church  passed  them ;  the  dust  of  the  parched 
road  rose  up  in  a  choking  mass ;  the  heavy  mist  of 
the  incense  hung  darkly  on  the  sunlit  air ;  the  tramp  of 
the  many  feet  startled  the  birds  from  their  rest,  and 
pierced  through  the  noonday  silence. 

It  passed  them,  and  left  them  behind  it ;  but  the  fresh 
leaves  were  choked  and  whitened  ;  the  birds  were  fluttered 
and  aflfrightened ;  the  old  man  coughed,  the  girl  strove 
to  brush  the  dust  motes  from  her  smarting  eyelids. 

"  That  is  the  Church  !"  said  the  stone-breaker,  with  a 
smile.  "Dust — terror — a  choked  voice — and  blinded 
eyes." 

Now  she  understood ;  and  her  beautiful  curled  lips 
laughed  mutely.    ' 

The  old  man  rammed  some  more  tobacco  into  the  bowl 
of  his  pipe. 

"  That  is  the  Church  1"  he  said.  "  To  burn  incense 
and  pray  for  rain,  and  to  fell  the  forests  that  were  the 
rain-makers." 

The  procession  passed  away  out  of  sight,  going  along 
the  highway  and  winding  by  the  course  of  the  river, 
calling  to  the  bright  blue  heavens  for  rain ;  whilst  the 
little  bells  rang  and  the  incense  curled  and  the  priests 
prayed  themselves  hoarse,  and  the  peasants  toiled  foot- 
sore, and  the  eager  steps  of  the  choral  children  trod  the 
tiny  gnat  dead  in  the  grasses  [yid  the  bright  butterfly 
dead  in  the  dust. 

The  priests  had  cast  a  severer  look  from  out  their 
down-dropped  eyelids  ;  the  children  had  huddled  together, 


82  FOLLE-FARINE. 

with  their  voices  faltering  a  little ;  and  the  boy  choristers 
had  shot  out  their  lips  in  gestures  of  defiance  and  oppro- 
brium as  they  had  passed  these  twain  beneath  the  way- 
side trees.     For  the  two  were  both  outcasts. 

"  Didst  thou  see  the  man  that  killed  the  king?"  whis- 
pered to  another- one  fair  and  curly-headed  baby,  who  was 
holding  in  the  sun  her  little,  white,  silver-fringed  banner, 
and  catching  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  sonorous  chant  as 
well  as  she  could  with  her  little  lisping  tones. 

M  Didst  thou  see  the  daughter  of  the  devil  ?"  muttered 
to  another  a  handsome  golden-brown  boy,  who  had  left 
his  herd  untended  in  the  meadow  to  don  his  scarlet  robes 
and  to  swing  about  the  censer  of  his  village  chapel. 

And  they  all  sang  louder,  and  tossed  more  incense  on 
high,  and  marched  more  closely  together  under  the  rays 
of  the  gleaming  crucifix  as  they  went;  feeling  that  they 
had  been  beneath  the  shadow  of  the  powers  of  darkness, 
and  that  they  were  purer  and  holier,  and  more  exalted, 
because  they  had  thus  passed  by  in  scorn  what  was 
accursed  with  psalms  on  their  lips,  with  the  cross  as  their 
symbol. 

So  they  went  their  way  through  the  peaceful  country 
with  a  glory  of  sunbeams  about  them — through  the  corn, 
past  the  orchards,  by  the  river,  into  the  heart  of  the  old 
brown  quiet  town,  and  about  the  foot  of  the  great  cathe- 
dral, where  they  kneeled  down  in  the  dust  and  prayed, 
then  rose  and  sang  the  "  Angelus." 

Then  the  tall  dark-visaged  priest,  who  had  led  them 
all  thither  under  the  standard  of  the  golden  crucifix,  lifted 
his  voice  alone  and  implored  God,  aud  exhorted  man ; 
implored  for  rain  and  all  the  blessings  of  harvest,  ex- 
horted to  patience  aud  the  imitation  of  God. 

The  people  were  moved  and  saddened,  and  listened, 
smiting  their  breasts  ;  and  after  awhile  rising  from  their 
knees,  many  of  them  in  tears,  dispersed  and  went  their 
wrays :  muttering  to  one  another: — "We  have  had  no 
such  harvests  as  those  of  old  since  the  man  that  slew  a 
saint  came  to  dwell  l^ere ;"  and  answering  to  one  an- 
other:— "We  had  never  such  droughts  as  these  in  the 
sweet  cool  weather  of  old,  before  the  offspring  of  hell 


FOLLE-FARINE.  83 

For  the  priests  had  not  said  to  them,  "  Lo,  your 
mercy  is  parched  as  the  earth,  and  your  hearts  as  the 
heavens  are  brazen." 


CHAPTER    II. 


In  the  days  of  his  youngest  youth,  in  the  old  drunken 
days  that  were  dead,  this  stone-breaker  Marcellin  had 
known  such  life  as  it  is  given  to  few  men  to  know — a  life 
of  the  soul  and  the  senses  ;  a  life  of  storm  and  delight ;  a 
life  mad  with  blood  and  with  wine;  a  life  of  divinest 
dreams  j  a  life  when  women  kissed  them,  and  bid  them 
slay ;  a  life  when  mothers  blessed  them  and  bade  them 
die ;  a  life,  strong,  awful,  splendid,  unutterable ;  a  life 
seized  at  its  fullest  and  fiercest  and  fairest,  out  of  an 
air  that  was  death,  off  an  earth  that  was  hell. 

When  his  cheeks  had  had  a  boy's  bloom  and  his  curls 
a  boy's  gold,  he  had  seen  a  nation  in  delirium ;  he  had 
been  one  of  the  elect  of  a  people ;  he  had  uttered  the 
words  that  burn,  and  wrought  the  acts  that  live  ;  he  had 
been  of  the  Thousand  of  Marsala  ;  and  he  had  been  of 
the  avengers  of  Thermidor;  he  had  raised  his  flutelike 
voice  from  the  tribune,  and  he  had  cast  in  his  vote  for 
the  death  of  a  king ;  passions  had  been  his  playthings, 
and  he  had  toyed  with  life  as  a  child  with  a  match ;  he 
had  beheld  the  despised  enthroned  in  power,  and  desola- 
tion left  within  king's  palaces ;  he,  too,  had  been  fierce, 
and  glad,  and  cruel,  and  gay,  and  drunken,  and  proud,  as 
the  whole  land  was ;  he  had  seen  the  white  beauty  of 
princely  women  bare  in  the  hands  of  the  mob,  and  the 
throats  that  princes  had  caressed  kissed  by  the  broad 
steel  knife ;  he  had  had  his  youth  in  a  wondrous  time, 
when  all  men  had  been  gods  or  devils,  and  all  women 
martyrs  or  furies. 

And  now, — he  broke  stones  to  get  daily  bread,  and 
those  who  passed  him  by  cursed  him,  saying, — 

"  This  man  slew  a  king." 

For  he  had  outlived  his  time,  and  the  life  that  had  been 


84  FOLLE-FARINE. 

golden  and  red  at  its  dawn  was  now  gray  and  pale  as 
the  ashes  of  a  fire  grown  cold ;  for  in  ail  the  list  of  the 
world's  weary  errors  there  is  no  mistake  so  deadly  as  age. 

Years  before,  in  such  hot  summer  weather  as  this 
against  which  the  Church  had  prayed,  the  old  man,  going 
homewards  to  his  cabin  amidst  the  fields,  had  met  a  little 
child  coming  straight  towards  him  in  the  full  crimson 
glow  of  the  setting  sun,  and  with  the  flame  of  the  poppies 
all  around  her.  He  hardly  knew  why  he  looked  at  her ; 
but  when  he  had  once  looked  his  eyes  rested  there. 

She  had  the  hues  of  his  youth  about  her;  in  that 
blood-red  light,  among  the  blood-red  flowers,  she  made 
him  think  of  women's  forms  that  he  had  seen  in  all  their 
grace  and  their  voluptuous  loveliness  clothed  in  the  red 
garment  of  death,  and  standing  on  the  dusky  red  of  the 
scaffold,  as  the  burning  mornings  of  the  summers  of 
slaughter  had  risen  over  the  land. 

The  child  was  all  alone  before  him  in  that  intense  glow 
as  of  fire  ;  above  her  there  was  a  tawny  sky,  flushed 
here  and  there  with  purple;  around  her  stretched  the 
solitary  level  of  the  fields  burnt  yellow  as  gold  by  the  long 
months  of  heat.  There  were  stripes  on  her  shoulders, 
blue  and  black  from  the  marks  of  a  thong. 

He  looked  at  her,  and  stopped  her,  why  he  hardly  knew, 
except  that  a  look  about  her,  beaten  but  yet  unsubdued, 
attracted  him.  He  had  seen  the  same  look  in  the  years 
of  his  youth,  on  the  faces  of  the  nobles  he  hated. 

"  Have  you  been  hurt  ?"  he  asked  her  in  his  harsh 
strong  voice.  She  put  her  heavy  load  of  fagots  down 
and  stared  at  him. 

"Hurt?"  She  echoed  the  word  stupidly.  No  one 
ever  thought  she  could  be  hurt;  what  was  done  to  her 
was  punishment  and  justice. 

"  Yes.     Those  str ipes — they  must  be  painful  ?" 

She  gave  a  gesture  of  assent  with  her  head,  but  she 
did  not  answer. 

"  Who  beat  you  ?"  he  pursued. 

A  cloud  of  passion  swept  over  her  bent  face. 

"  Flamma." 

"  You  were  wicked  ?" 

"  They  said  so." 


FOLLE-FARINE.  85 

"  And  what  do  you  do  when  you  are  beaten?" 

"  I  shut  my  mouth." 

"For  what?" 

"  For  fear  they  should  know  it  hurt  me — and  be  glad." 

Marcellin  leaned  on  his  elm  stick,  and  fastened  on  her 
his  keen,  passionless  eyes  with  a  look  that,  for  him  who 
was  shamed  and  was  shunned  by  all  his  kind,  was  almost 
sympathy. 

"  Come  to  my  hut,"  he  said  to  her.  "  I  know  a  herb 
that  will  take  the  fret  and  the  ache  out  of  your  bruises." 

The  child  followed  him  passively,  half  stupidly;  he 
was  the  first  creature  that  had  ever  bidden  her  go  with 
him,  and  this  rough  pity  of  his  was  sweet  to  her,  with  an 
amazing  incredible  balm  in  it  that  only  those  can  know 
who  see  raised  against  them  every  man's  hand,  and  hear 
on  their  ears  the  mockery  of  all  the  voices  of  their  world. 
Under  reviling  and  contempt  and  constant  rejection,  she 
had  become  savage  as  a  trapped  hawk,  wild  as  an  escaped 
panther ;  but  to  him  she  was  obedient  and  passive,  be- 
cause he  had  spoken  to  her  without  a  taunt  and  without 
a  curse,  which  until  now  had  been  the  sole  two  forms  of 
human  speech  she  had  heard.  His  little  hut  was  in  the 
midst  of  those  spreading  cornfields,  set  where  two  path- 
ways crossed  each  other,  and  stretched  down  the  gentle 
slope  of  the  cultured  lands  to  join  the  great  highway — a 
hut  of  stones  and  plaited  rushes,  with  a  roof  of  thatch, 
where  the  old  republican,  hardy  of  frame  and  born  of  a 
toiling  race,  dwelt  in  solitude,  aud  broke  his  scanty  bitter 
bread  without  lament,  if  without  content. 

lie  took  some  leaves  of  a  simple  herb  that  he  knew, 
soaked  them  with  water,  and  bound  them  on  her  shoul- 
ders, not  ungainly,  though  his  hand  was  so  rough  with 
labor,  and,  as  men  said,  had  been  so  often  fed  with  car- 
nage. Then  he  gave  her  a  draught  of  goat's  milk,  sweet 
and  fresh,  from  a  wooden  bowl ;  shared  with  her  the  dry 
black  crusts  that  formed  his  only  evening  meal ;  bestowed 
on  her  a  gift  of  a  rare  old  scarlet  scarf  of  woven  wools 
and  Eastern  broideries,  one  of  the  few  relics  of  his  buried 
life  ;  lifted  the  fagots  on  her  back,  so  that  she  could 
carry  them  with  greater  ease  ;  and  set  her  on  her  home- 
ward way. 


86  FOLLE-FARINE. 

"  Come  to  me  again,"  he  said,  briefly,  as  she  went 
across  the  threshold.  The  child  bent  her  head  in  silence, 
and  kissed  his  hand  quickly  and  timidly,  like  a  grateful 
dog  that  is  amazed  to  have  a  caress,  and  not  a  blow. 

"  After  a  forty  years'  vow  I  have  broken  it ;  I  have 
pitied  a  human  thing,"  the  old  man  muttered  as  he  stood 
in  his  doorway  looking  after  her  shadow  as  it  passed 
small  and  dark  across  the  scarlet  light  of  the  poppies. 

"  They  call  him  vile,  and  they  say  that  he  slew  men," 
thought  the  child,  who  had  long  known  his  face,  though 
he  never  had  noted  hers  ;  and  it  seemed  to  her  that  all 
mercy  lay  in  her  father's  kingdom — which  they  called  the 
kingdom  of  evil.  The  cool  moist  herbs  soaked  on  her 
bruises  ;  and  the  draught  of  milk  had  slaked  the  thirst  of 
her  throat. 

"  Is  evil  good  ?"  she  asked  in  her  heart  as  she  went 
through  the  tall  red  poppies. 

And  from  that  evening  thenceforward  Folle-Farine  and 
Marcellin  cleaved  to  one  another,  being  outcasts  from  all 
others. 


CHAPTER    III. 


As  the  religious  gathering  broke  up  and  split  in  divers 
streams  to  wander  divers  ways,  the  little  town  returned 
to  its  accustomed  stillness — a  stillness  that  seemed  to 
have  in  it  the  calm  of  a  thousand  sleeping  years,  and  the 
legends  and  the  dreams  of  half  a  score  of  old  dead  cen- 
turies. 

On  market-days  and  saint-days,  days  of  high  feast  or 
of  perpetual  chaffering,  the  town  was  full  of  color,  move- 
ment, noise,  and  population.  The  country  people  crowded 
in,  filling  it  with  the  jingling  of  mule-bells;  the  fisher 
people  came,  bringing  in  with  them  the  crisp  salt  smell 
of  the  sea  and  the  blue  of  the  sea  on  their  garments  ;  its 
own  tanners  and  ivory  carvers,  and  fruiterers,  and  lace- 
makers  turned  out  by  the  hundred  in  all  the  quaint 
variety  of  costumes  that  their  forefathers  had  bequeathed 


FOLLE-FARINE.  87 

to  them,  and  to  which  they  were  still  wise  enough  to 
adhere. 

But  at  other  times,  when  the  fishers  were  in  their 
hamlets,  and  the  peasantry  on  their  lands  and  in  their 
orchards,  and  the  townsfolk  at  their  labors  in  the  old 
rich  renaissance  mansions  which  they  had  turned  into 
tanneries,  and  granaries,  and  wool-sheds,  and  workshops, 
the  place  was  profoundly  still ;  scarcely  a  child  at  play  in 
the  streets,  scarcely  a  dog  asleep  in  the  sun. 

When  the  crowds  had  gone,  the  priests  laid  aside  their 
vestments,  and  donned  the  black  serge  of  their  daily 
habit,  and  went  to  their  daily  avocations  in  their  humble 
dwellings.  The  crosses  and  the  censers  were  put  back 
upon  their  altars,  and  hung  up  upon  their  pillars.  The 
boy  choristers  and  the  little  children  put  their  white  linen 
and  their  scarlet  robes  back  in  cupboards  and  presses, 
with  heads  of  lavender  and  sprigs  of  rosemary  to  keep 
the  moth  and  the  devil  away,  and  went  to  their  fields,  to 
their  homes,  to  their  herds,  to  their  paper  kites,  to  their 
daisy  chains,  to  the  poor  rabbits  they  pent  in  a  hutch,  to 
the  poor  flies  they  killed  in  the  sun. 

The  streets  became  quite  still,  the  market-place  quite 
empty ;  the  drowsy  silence  of  a  burning,  cloudless  after- 
noon was  over  all  the  quiet  places  about  the  cathedral 
walls,  where  of  old  the  bishops  and  the  canons  dwelt; 
gray  shady  courts ;  dim  open  cloisters ;  houses  covered 
with  oaken  carvings,  and  shadowed  with  the  spreading 
branches  of  chestnuts  and  of  lime-trees  that  were  as  aged 
as  themselves. 

Under  the  shelter  of  one  of  the  lindens,  after  the  popu- 
lace had  gone,  there  was  seated  on  a  broad  stone  bench 
the  girl  who  had  stood  by  the  wayside  erect  and  unbend- 
ing as  the  procession  had  moved  before  her. 

She  had  flung  herself  down  in  dreamy  restfulness. 
She  had  delivered  her  burden  of  vegetables  and  fruit  at  a 
shop  near  by,  whose  awning  stretched  out  into  the  street 
like  a  toadstool  yellow  with  the  sun. 

The  heat  was  intense ;  she  had  been  on  foot  all  day ; 
she  sat  to  rest  a  moment,  and  put  her  burning  hands 
under  a  little  rill  of  water  that  spouted  into  a  basin  in  a 
niche  in  the  wall — an  ancient  well,  with  a  stone  image 


88  FOLLEFARINE. 

sculptured  above,  and  a  wreath  of  vine-leaves  in  stone 
running1  around,  in  the  lavish  ornamentation  of  an  age 
when  men  loved  loveliness  for  its  own  sake,  and  be- 
grudged neither  time  nor  labor  in  its  service. 

She  leaned  over  the  fountain,  kept  cool  by  the  roofing" 
of  the  thick  green  leaves  ;  there  was  a  metal  cup  attached 
to  the  basin  by  a  chain,  she  filled  it  at  the  running  thread 
of  water,  and  stooped  her  lips  to  it  again  and  again 
thirstily. 

The  day  was  sultry ;  the  ways  were  long  and  white 
with  powdered  limestone ;  her  throat  was  still  parched 
with  the  dust  raised  by  the  many  feet  of  the  multitude  ; 
and  although  she  had  borne  in  the  great  basket  which 
now  stood  empty  at  her  side,  cherries,  peaches,  mulber- 
ries, melons,  full  of  juice  and  lusciousness,  this  daughter 
of  the  devil  had  not  taken  even  one  to  freshen  her  dry 
mouth. 

Folle-Farine  stooped  to  the  water,  and  played  with  it, 
and  drank  it,  and  steeped  her  lips  and  her  arms  in  it ; 
lying  there  on  the  stone  bench,  with  her  bare  feet  curled 
one  in  another,  and  her  slender  round  limbs  full  of  the 
voluptuous  repose  of  a  resting  panther. 

The  coolness,  the  murmur,  the  clearness,  the  peace,  the 
soft  flowing  movement  of  water,  possess  an  ineffable  charm 
for  natures  that  are  passion-tossed,  feverish,  and  full  of 
storm. 

There  was  a  dreamy  peace  about  the  place,  too,  which 
had  charms  likewise  for  her,  in  the  dusky  arch  of  the  long 
cloisters,  in  the  lichen-grown  walls,  in  the  broad  pam- 
raents  of  the  paven  court,  in  the  clusters  of  delicate  carv- 
ings beneath  and  below;  in  the  sculptured  frieze  where 
little  nests  that  the  birds  had  made  in  the  spring  still 
rested ;  in  the  dense  brooding  thickness  of  the  boughs 
that  brought  the  sweetness  and  the  shadows  of  the  woods 
into  the  heart  of  the  peopled  town. 

She  stayed  there,  loath  to  move ;  loath  to  return  where 
a  jeer,  a  bruise,  a  lifted  stick,  a  muttered  curse,  were  all 
her  greeting  and  her  guerdon. 

As  she  lay  thus,  one  of  the  doors  in  the  old  houses  in 
the  cloisters  opened ;  the  head  of  an  old  woman  was 
thrust  out,  crowned  with  the  high,  fan-shaped  comb,  and 


FOLLE-FARINE.  89 

the  towering  white  linen  cap  that  are  the  female  note  of 
that  especial  town. 

The  woman  was  the  mother  of  the  sacristan,  and  she, 
looking  out,  shrieked  shrilly  to  her  son, — 

*  Georges,  Georges  !  come  hither.  The  devil's  daughter 
is  drinking  the  blest  water!" 

The  sacristan  was  hoeing  among  his  cabbages  in  the 
little  garden  behind  his  house,  surrounded  with  dipt  yew, 
and  damp  from  the  deep  shade  of  the  cathedral,  that  over- 
shadowed it. 

He  ran  out  at  his  mother's  call,  hoe  in  hand,  himself  an 
old  man,  though  stout  and  strong. 

The  well  in  the  wall  was  his  especial  charge  and  pride  ; 
immeasurable  sanctity  attached  to  it. 

According  to  tradition,  the  water  had  spouted  from  the 
stone  itself,  at  the  touch  of  a  branch  of  blossoming  pear, 
held  in  the  hand  of  St.  Jerome,  who  had  returned  to  earth 
in  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century,  and  dwelt  for 
awhile  near  the  cathedral,  working  at  the  honorable  trade 
of  a  cordwainer,  and  accomplishing  mighty  miracles 
throughout  the  district. 

It  was  said  that  some  of  his  miraculous  power  still  re- 
mained in  the  fountain,  and  that  even  yet,  those  who 
drank  on  St.  Jerome's  day  in  full  faith  and  with  believing 
hearts,  were,  oftentimes,  cleansed  of  sin,  and  purified  of 
bodily  disease.  Wherefore  on  that  day,  throngs  of  peas- 
antry nocked  in  from  all  sides,  and  crowded  round  it,  and 
drank ;  to  the  benefit  of  the  sacristan  in  charge,  if  not  to 
that  of  their  souls  and  bodies. 

Summoned  by  his  mother,  he  flew  to  the  rescue  of  the 
sanctified  spring. 

"  Get  you  gone !"  he  shouted.  "  Get  you  gone,  you 
child  of  hell !  How  durst  you  touch  the  blessed  basin  ? 
Do  you  think  that  God  struck  water  from  the  stone  for 
such  as  you  ?" 

Folle-Farine  lifted  her  head  and  looked  him  in  the  face 
with  her  audacious  eyes  and  laughed  ;  then  tossed  her 
head  again  and  plunged  it  into  the  bright  living  water, 
till  her  lips,  and  her  cheeks,  and  all  the  rippling  hair  about 
her  temples  sparkled  with  its  silvery  drops. 

8* 


90  FOLLE-FARINE. 

The  sacristan,  infuriated  at  once  by  the  impiety  and  the 
defiance,  shrieked  aloud  : 

"  Insolent  animal  !  Daughter  of  Satan  !  I  will  teach 
you  to  taint  the  gift  of  God  with  lips  of  the  devil !" 

And  he  seized  her  roughly  with  one  hand  upon  her 
shoulder,  and  with  the  other  raised  the  hoe  and  bran- 
dished the  wooden  staff  of  it  above  her  head  in  threat  to 
strike  her  ;  whilst  his  old  mother,  still  thrusting  her  lofty 
headgear  and  her  wrinkled  face  from  out  the  door, 
screamed  to  him  to  show  he  was  a  man,  and  have  no 
mercy. 

As  his  grasp  touched  her,  and  the  staff  cast  its  shadow 
across  her,  Folle-Farine  sprang  up,  defiance  and  fury 
breathing  from  all  her  beautiful  fierce  face. 

She  seized  the  staff  in  her  right  hand,  wrenched  it  with 
a  swift  movement  from  its  hold,  and,  catching  his  head 
under  her  left  arm,  rained  blows  on  him  from  his  own 
weapon,  with  a  sudden  gust  of  breathless  rage  which 
blinded  him,  and  lent  to  her  slender  muscular  limbs  the 
strength  and  the  force  of  man. 

Then,  as  rapidly  as  she  had  seized  and  struck  him,  she 
flung  him  from  her  with  such  violence  that  he  fell  pros- 
trate on  the  pavement  of  the  court,  caught  up  the  metal 
pail  which  stood  by  ready  filled,  dashed  the  water  over 
him  where  he  lay,  and,  turning  from  him  without  a  word, 
walked  across  the  courtyard,  slowly,  and  with  a  haughty 
grace  in  all  the  carriage  of  her  bare  limbs  and  the  folds 
of  her  ragged  garments,  bearing  the  empty  osier  basket 
on  her  head,  deaf  as  the  stones  around  her  to  the  screams 
of  the  sacristan  and  his  mother. 

In  these  secluded  cloisters,  and  in  the  high  noontide, 
when  all  were  sleeping  or  eating  in  the  cool  shelter  of 
their  darkened  houses,  the  old  woman's  voice  remained 
unheard. 

The  saints  heard,  no  doubt,  but  they  were  too  lazy  to 
stir  from  their  niches  in  that  sultry  noontide,  and,  except 
the  baying  of  a  chained  dog  aroused,  there  was  no  answer 
to  the  outcry  ;  and  Folle-Farine  passed  out  into  the  market- 
place unarrested,  and  not  meeting  another  living  creature. 
As  she  turned  into  one  of  the  squares  leading  to  the  open 
country,  she  saw  in  the  distance  one  of  the  guardians  of 


FOLLE-FARINE.  91 

the  peace  of  the  town,  moving  quickly  towards  the  clois- 
ters, with  his  glittering  lace  shining  in  the  sun  and  his 
long  scabbard  clattering  upon  the  stones. 

She  laughed  a  little  as  she  saw. 

11  They  will  not  come  after  me,"  she  said  to  herself. 
"  They  are  too  afraid  of  the  devil." 

She  judged  rightly;  they  did  not  come. 

She  crossed  all  the  wide  scorching  square,  whose 
white  stones  blazed  in  the  glare  of  the  sun.  There  was 
nothing  in  sight  except  a  stray  cat  prowling  in  a  corner, 
and  three  sparrows  quarreling  over  a  foul-smelling  heap 
of  refuse. 

The  quaint  old  houses  round  seemed  all  asleep,  with 
the  shutters  closed  like  eyelids  over  their  little,  dim,  aged 
orbs  of  windows. 

The  gilded  vanes  on  their  twisted  chimneys  and  carved 
parapets  pointed  motionless  to  the  warm  south.  There 
was  not  a  sound,  except  the  cawing  of  some  rooks  that 
built  their  nests  high  aloft  in  the  fretted  pinnacles  of  the 
cathedral. 

Undisturbed  she  crossed  the  square  and  took  her  way 
down  the  crooked  streets  that  led  her  homeward  to  the 
outlying  country.  It  was  an  old,  twisted,  dusky  place, 
with  the  water  flowing  through  its  center  as  its  only 
roadway ;  and  in  it  there  were  the  oldest  houses  of  the 
town,  all  of  timber,  black  with  age,  and  carved  with  the 
wonderful  florid  fancies  and  grotesque  conceits  of  the 
years  when  a  house  was  to  its  master  a  thing  beloved 
and  beautiful,  a  bulwark,  an  altar,  a  heritage,  an  heir- 
loom, to  be  dwelt  in  all  the  days  of  a  long  life,  and  be- 
queathed in  all  honor  and  honesty  to  a  noble  offspring. 

The  street  was  very  silent,  the  ripple  of  the  water  was 
the  chief  sound  that  filled  it.  Its  tenants  were  very  poor, 
and  in  many  of  its  antique  mansions  the  beggars  shared 
shelter  with  the  rats  and  the  owls. 

In  one  of  these  dwellings,  however,  there  were  still 
some  warmth  and  color. 

The  orange  and  scarlet  flowers  of  a  nasturtium  curled 
up  its  twisted  pilasters ;  the  big,  fair  clusters  of  hydrangea 
filled  up  its  narrow  casements  ;  a  breadth  of  many-colored 
saxafrage,  with  leaves  of  green  and  rose,  and  blossoms  of 


92  FOLLE-FARINE. 

purple  and  white,  hung  over  the  balcony  rail,  which  five 
centuries  earlier  had  been  draped  with  cloth  of  gold  ;  and 
a  little  yellow  song-bird  made  music  in  the  empty  niche 
from  which  the  sculptured  flower-de-luce  had  been  so  long 
torn  down. 

From  that  window  a  woman  looked  down,  leaning  with 
folded  arms  above  the  rose-tipped  saxafrage,  and  beneath 
the  green-leaved  vine. 

She  was  a  fair  woman,  white  as  the  lilies,  she  had 
silver  pins  in  her  amber  hair,  and  a  mouth  that  laughed 
sweetly.     She  called  to  Folle-Farine, — 

"  You  brown  thing;  why  do  you  stare  at  me  ?" 

Folle-Farine  started  and  withdrew  the  fixed  gaze  of 
her  lustrous  eyes. 

"  Because  you  are  beautiful,"  she  answered  curtly. 
All  beautiful  things  had  a  fascination  for  her. 

This  woman  above  was  very  fair  to  see,  and  the  girl 
looked  at  her  as  she  looked  at  the  purple  butterflies  in  the 
sun  j  at  the  stars  shining  down  through  the  leaves ;  at 
the  vast,  dim,  gorgeous  figures  in  the  cathedral  windows ; 
at  the  happy  children  running  to  their  mothers  with  their 
hands  full  of  primroses,  as  she  saw  them  in  the  woods  at 
springtime;  at  the  laughing  groups  round  the  wood-fires 
in  the  new  year  time  when  she  passed  a  lattice  pane  that 
the  snowdrift  had  not  blocked;  at  all  the  things  that 
were  so  often  in  her  sight,  and  yet  with  which  her  life 
had  no  part  or  likeness. 

She  stood  there  on  the  rough  flints,  in  the  darkness 
cast  from  the  jutting  beams  of  the  house  ;  and  the  other 
happier  creature  leaned  above  in  the  light,  white  and 
rose-hued,  and  with  the  silver  bells  of  the  pins  shaking 
in  her  yellow  tresses. 

"You  are  old  Flamma's  granddaughter,"  cried  the 
other,  from  her  leafy  nest  above.  "  You  work  for  him  all 
day  long  at  the  mill  ?" 

"  Yes." 

"  And  your  feet  are  bare,  and  your  clothes  are  rags, 
and  you  go  to  and  fro  like  a  packhorse,  and  the  people 
hate  you  ?  You  must  be  a  fool.  Your  father  was  tUp 
devil,  they  say :  why  do  you  not  make  him  give  you 
good  things  ?" 


FOLLE-FARINE.  93 

"  He  will  not  hear,"  the  child  muttered  wearily.  Had 
she  not  besought  him  endlessly  with  breathless  prayer  ? 

M  Will  he  not  ?     Wait  a  year — wait  a  year." 

"  What  then  ?"  asked  Folle-Farine,  with  a  quick  startled 
breath. 

"  In  a  year  you  will  be  a  woman,  and  he  always  hears 
women,  they  say." 

"  He  hears  you." 

The  fair  woman  above  laughed: 

"  Perhaps ;  in  his  fashion.    But  he  pays  me  ill  as  yet." 

And  she  plucked  one  of  the  silver  pins  from  her  hair, 
and  stabbed  the  rosy  foam  of  the  saxafrage  through  and 
through  with  it ;  for  she  was  but  a  gardener's  wife,  and 
was  restless  and  full  of  discontent. 

"  Get  you  gone,"  she  added  quickly,  "  or  I  will 
throw  a  stone  at  you,  you  witch ;  you  have  the  evil 
eye,  they  say,  and  you  may  strike  me  blind  if  you 
stare  so." 

Folle-Farine  went  on  her  way  over  the  sharp  stones 
with  a  heavy  heart.  That  picture  in  the  casement  had 
made  that  passage  bright  to  her  many  a  time ;  and  when 
at  last  the  picture  had  moved  and  spoken,  it  had  only 
mocked  her  and  reviled  her  as  the  rest  did. 

The  street  was  dark  for  her  like  all  the  others  now. 

The  gardener's  wife,  leaning  there,  with  the  green  and 
gold  of  the  vineleaves  brushing  her  hair,  looked  after  her 
down  the  crooked  way. 

"  That  young  wretch  will  be  more  beautiful  than  I," 
she  thought ;  and  the  thought  was  bitter  to  her,  as  such 
a  one  is  to  a  fair  woman. 

Folle-Farine  went  slowly  and  sadly  through  the  street, 
with  her  head  dropped,  and  the  large  osier  basket  trailing 
behind  her  over  the  stones. 

She  was  well  used  to  be  pelted  with  words  hard  as 
hailstones,  and  usually  heeded  them  little,  or  gave  them 
back  with  sullen  defiance.  But  from  this  woman  they 
had  wounded  her  ;  from  that  bright  bower  of  golden 
leaves  and  scarlet  flowers  she  had  faintly  fancied  some 
stray  beam  of  light  might  wander  even  to  her. 

She  was  soon  outside  the  gates  of  the  town,  and 
beyond  the  old  walls,  where  the  bramble  and  the  lichen 


94  FOLLE-FARWE. 

grew  over  the  huge  stones  of  ramparts  and  fortifications, 
useless  and  decayed  from  age. 

The  country  roads  and  lanes,  the  silver  streams  and 
the  wooden  bridges,  the  lanes  through  which  the  market 
mules  picked  their  careful  way,  the  fields  in  which  the 
white-capped  peasant  women,  and  the  brindled  oxen  were 
at  work,  stretched  all  before  her  in  a  radiant  air,  sweet 
with  the  scent  of  ripening  fruits  from  many  orchards. 

Here  and  there  a  wayside  Calvary  rose  dark  against 
the  sun  ;  here  and  there  a  chapel  bell  sounded  from  under 
some  little  peaked  red  roof.  The  cattle  dozed  beside 
meadow  ditches  that  were  choked  with  wild  flowers ;  the 
dogs  lay  down  beside  their  sheep  and  slept. 

At  the  first  cottage  which  she  passed,  the  housewife 
sat  out  under  a  spreading  chestnut-tree,  weaving  lace 
upon  her  knee. 

Folle-Farine  looked  wistfully  at  the  woman,  who  was 
young  and  pretty,  and  who  darted  her  swift  skilled  hand 
in  and  out  and  around  the  bobbins,  keeping  time  mean- 
while with  a  mirthful  burden  that  she  sang. 

The  woman  looked  up  and  frowned  as  the  girl  passed 
by  her. 

A  little  way  farther  on  there  was  a  winehouse  by  the 
roadside,  built  of  wood,  vine-wreathed,  and  half  hidden  in 
the  tall  flowering  briers  of  its  garden. 

Out  of  the  lattice  there  was  leaning  a  maiden  with  the 
silver  cross  on  her  bosom  shining  in  the  sun,  and  her 
meek  blue  eyes  smiling  down  from  under  the  tower  of  her 
high  white  cap.  She  was  reaching  a  carnation  to  a  stu- 
dent who  stood  below,  with  long  fair  locks  and  ruddy 
cheeks,  and  a  beard  yellow  with  the  amber  down  of  twenty 
years  ;  and  who  kissed  her  white  wrist  as  he  caught  the 
red  flower. 

Folle-Farine  glanced  at  the  pretty  picture  with  a  dull 
wonder  and  a  nameless  pain  :  what  could  it  mean  to  be 
happy  like  that  ? 

Half  a  league  onward  she  passed  another  cottage 
shadowed  by  a  sycamore-tree,  and  with  the  swrallows 
whirling  around  its  tall  twisted  stone  chimneys,  and  a 
beurre  pear  covering  with  branch  and  bloom  its  old  gray 
walls. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  95 

Ad  aged  woman  sat  sipping  coffee  in  the  sun,  and  a 
young  one  was  sweeping  the  blue  and  white  tiles  with  a 
broom,  singing  gayly  as  she  swept. 

"  Art  thou  well  placed,  my  mother  ?"  she  asked,  pausing 
to  look  tenderly  at  the  withered  brown  face,  on  which  the 
shadows  of  the  sycamore  leaves  were  playing. 

The  old  mother  smiled,  steeping  her  bread  in  the  coffee- 
bowl. 

"  Surely,  child  ;  I  can  feel  the  sun  and  hear  you  sing." 

She  was  happy  though  she  was  blind. 

Folle-Farine  stood  a  moment  and  looked  at  them  across 
a  hedge  of  honeysuckle. 

"  How  odd  it  must  feel  to  have  any  one  to  care  to  hear 
your  voice  like  that !"  she  thought;  and  she  went  on  her 
way  through  the  poppies  and  the  corn,  half  softened,  half 
enraged. 

Was  she  lower  than  they  because  she  could  find  no 
one  to  care  for  her  or  take  gladness  in  her  life  ?  Or  was 
she  greater  than  they  because  all  human  delights  were  to 
her  as  the  dead  letters  of  an  unknown  tongue  ? 

Down  a  pathway  fronting  her  that  ran  midway  between 
the  yellowing  seas  of  wheat  and  a  belt  of  lilac  clover, 
over  which  a  swarm  of  bees  was  murmuring,  there  came 
a  countrywoman,  crushing  the  herbage  under  her  heavy 
shoes,  ragged,  picturesque,  sunbrowned,  swinging  deep 
brass  pails  as  she  went  to  the  herds  on  the  hillside. 

She  carried  a  child  twisted  into  the  folds  of  her 
dress ;  a  boy,  half  asleep,  with  his  curly  head  against  her 
breast.  As  she  passed,  the  woman  drew  her  kerchief 
over  her  bosom  and  over  the  brown  rosv  face  of  the 
child. 

"  She  shall  not  look  at  thee,  my  darling,"  she  muttered. 
"Her  look  withered  Remy's  little  limb." 

And  she  covered  the  child  jealously,  and  turned  aside, 
so  that  she  should  tread  a  separate  pathway  through  the 
clover,  and  did  not  brush  "the  garments  of  the  one  she 
was  compelled  to  pass. 

Folle-Farine  heard,  and  laughed  aloud. 

She  knew  of  what  the  woman  was  thinking. 

In  the  summer  of  the  previous  year,  as  she  had  passed 
the  tanyard  on  the  western  bank  of  the  river,  the  tanner's 


96  FOLLE-FARIXE. 

little  son,  rushing  out  in  haste,  had  curled  his  mouth  in 
insult  at  her,  and  clapping  his  hands,  hissed  in  a  child's 
love  of  cruelty  the  mocking  words  which  he  had  heard 
his  elders  use  of  her.  In  answer,  she  had  only  turned 
her  head  and  looked  down  at  him  with  calm  eyes  of 
scorn. 

But  the  child,  running  out  fast,  and  startled  by  that 
regard,  had  stepped  upon  a  shred  of  leather  and  had 
fallen  heavily,  breaking  his  left  leg  at  the  kuee.  The 
limb,  unskillfully  dealt  with,  and  enfeebled  by  a  tendency 
to  disease,  had  never  been  restored,  but  hung  limp, 
crooked,  useless,  withered  from  below  the  knee. 

Through  all  the  country  side  the  little  cripple,  Remy, 
creeping  out  into  the  sun  upon  his  crutches,  was  pointed 
out  in  a  passionate  pity  as  the  object  of  her  sorcery,  the 
victim  of  her  vengeance.  When  she  had  heard  what 
they  said  she  had  laughed  as  she  laughed  now,  drawing 
together  her  straight  brows  and  showing  her  glistening 
teeth. 

All  the  momentary  softness  died  in  her  as  the  peasant 
covered  the  boy's  face  and  turned  aside  into  the  clover. 
She  laughed  aloud  and  swept  on  through  the  half-ripe 
corn  with  that  swift,  harmonious,  majestic  movement 
which  was  inborn  in  her,  as  it  is  inborn  in  the  deer  or 
the  antelope,  singing  again  as  she  went  those  strange 
wild  airs,  like  the  sigh  of  the  wind,  which  were  all  the 
language  that  lingered  in  her  memory  from  the  laud  that 
had  seen  her  birth. 

To  such  aversion  as  this  she  was  too  well  used  for  it 
to  be  a  matter  of  even  notice  to  her.  She  knew  that  she 
was  marked  and  shunned  by  the  community  amidst  which 
her  lot  was  cast ;  and  she  accepted  proscription  without 
wonder  and  without  resistance. 

Folle-Farine:  the  Dust.  What  lower  thing  did  earth 
hold? 

In  this  old-world  district,  amidst  the  pastures  and  corn- 
lands  of  Normandy,  superstition  had  taken  a  hold  which 
the  passage  of  centuries  and  the  advent  of  revolution  had 
done  very  little  to  lessen. 

Few  of  the  people  could  read  and  fewer  still  could 
write.     They  knew  nothing  but  what  their  priests  and 


FOLLE-FARINE.  97 

their  politicians  told  them  to  believe.  They  went  to  their 
beds  with  the  poultry,  and  rose  as  the  cock  crew :  they 
went  to  mass,  as  their  ducks  to  the  osier  and  weed  ponds ; 
and  to  the  conscription  as  their  lambs  to  the  slaughter. 
They  understood  that  there  was  a  world  beyond  them, 
but  they  remembered  it  only  as  the  best  market  for  their 
fruit,  their  fowls,  their  lace,  their  skins. 

Their  brains  were  as  dim  as  were  their  oil-lit  streets 
at  night;  though  their  lives  were  content  and  mirthful, 
and  the  most  part  pious.  They  went  out  into  the  sum- 
mer meadows  chanting  aves,  in  seasons  of  drought  to 
pray  for  rain  on  their  parching  orchards,  in  the  same 
credulity  with  which  they  groped  through  the  winter 
fog,  bearing  torches  and  chanting  dirges  to  gain  a  bless- 
ing at  seed-time  on  their  bleak  black  fallows. 

The  beauty  and  the  faith  of  the  old  Mediaeval  life  were 
with  them  still ;  and  with  its  beauty  and  its  faith  were 
its  bigotry  and  its  cruelty  likewise.  They  led  simple  and 
contented  lives ;  for  the  most  part  honest,  and  among 
themselves  cheerful  and  kindly ;  preserving  much  grace 
of  color,  of  costume,  of  idiosyncrasy,  because  apart  from 
the  hueless  communism  and  characterless  monotony  of 
modern  cities. 

But  they  believed  in  sorcery  and  in  devilry ;  they  were 
brutal  to  their  beasts,  and  could  be  as  brutal  to  their  foes  ; 
they  were  steeped  in  legend  and  tradition  from  their 
cradles ;  and  all  the  darkest  superstitions  of  dead  ages 
still  found  home  and  treasury  in  their  hearts  and  at  their 
hearths. 

Therefore,  believing  her  a  creature  of  evil,  they  were 
inexorable  against  her,  and  thought  that  in  being  so  they 
did  their  duty. 

They  had  always  been  a  religious  people  in  this  birth 
country  of  the  Flamma  race;  the  strong  poetic  venera- 
tion of  their  forefathers,  which  had  symbolized  itself  in 
the  carving  of  every  lintel,  corbel,  or  buttress  in  their 
streets,  and  in  the  fashion  of  every  spire  on  which  a 
weather-vane  could  gleam  against  their  suns,  was  still  in 
their  blood ;  the  poetry  had  departed,  but  the  bigotry  re- 
mained. 

Their  ancestors  had  burned  wizards  and  witches  by  the 
9 


98  FOLLE-FARINE. 

score  in  the  open  square  of  the  cathedral  place,  and  their 
grandsires  and  grandams  had  in  brave,  dumb,  ignorant 
peasant  fashion  held  fast  to  the  lily  and  the  cross,  and 
gone  by  hundreds  to  the  salutation  of  the  axe  and  the 
baptism  of  the  sword  in  the  red  days  of  revolution. 

They  were  the  same  people  still :  industrious,  frugal, 
peaceful,  loyal;  wedded  to  old  ways  and  to  old  relics, 
content  on  little,  and  serene  of  heart ;  yet,  withal,  where 
they  feared  or  where  they  hated,  brutal  with  the  brutality 
begotten  of  abject  ignorance.  And  they  had  been  so  to 
this  outcast  whom  they  all  called  Folle-Farine. 

When  she  had  first  come  amidst  them,  a  little  desolate 
foreign  child,  mute  with  the  dumbness  of  an  unknown 
tongue,  and  cast  adrift  among  strange  people,  unfamiliar 
ways,  and  chill  blank  glances,  she  had  shyly  tried  in  a 
child's  vague  instincts  of  appeal  and  trust  to  make  friends 
with  the  other  children  that  she  saw,  and  to  share  a  little 
in  the  mothers'  smiles  and  the  babies'  pastimes  that  were 
all  around  her  in  the  glad  green  world  of  summer. 

But  she  had  been  denied  and  rejected  with  hard  words 
and  harder  blows  ;  at  her  coming.the  smiles  had  changed 
to  frowns,  and  the  pastime  into  terror.  She  was  proud, 
she  was  shy,  she  was  savage ;  she  felt  rather  than  under- 
stood that  she  was  suspected  and  reviled ;  she  ceased  to 
seek  her  own  kind,  and  only  went  for  companionship  and 
sympathy  to  the  creatures  of  the  fields  and  the  woods,  to 
the  things  of  the  earth  and  the  sky  and  the  water. 

"  Thou  art  the  devil's  daughter  I"  half  in  sport  hissed 
the  youths  in  the  market-place  against  her  as  the  little 
child  went  among  them,  carrying  a  load  for  her  grand- 
sire  heavier  than  her  arms  knew  how  to  bear. 

"  Thou  wert  plague-spotted  from  thy  birth,"  said  the 
old  man  himself,  as  she  strained  her  small  limbs  to  and 
fro  the  floors  of  his  storehouses,  carrying  wood  or  flour 
or  tiles  or  rushes,  or  whatever  there  chanced  to  need  such 
convoy. 

11  Get  thee  away,  we  are  not  to  touch  thee  I"  hissed  the 
six-year-old  infants  at  play  by  the  river  when  she  waded 
in  amidst  them  to  reach  with  her  lither  arm  the  far-off 
water-flowers  they  were  too  timorous  to  pluck,  and  tender 
it  to  the  one  who  had  desired  it. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  99 

"  The  devil  begot  thee,  and  my  cow  fell  ill  yesternight 
after  thou  hadst  laid  hands  on  her!"  muttered  the  old 
women,  lifting  a  stick  as  she  went  near  to  their  cattle  in 
the  meadows  to  brush  off  with  a  broad  dockleaf  the  flies 
that  were  teasing  the  poor,  meek,  patient  beasts. 

So,  cursed  when  she  did  her  duty,  and  driven  away 
when  she  tried  to  do  good,  her  young  soul  had  hardened 
itself  and  grown  fierce,  mute,  callous,  isolated. 

There  were  only  the  four-footed  things,  so  wise,  so 
silent,  so  tender  of  heart,  so  bruised  of  body,  so  innocent, 
and  so  agonized,  that  had  compassion  for  her,  and  saved 
her  from  utter  desolation.  Iu  the  mild  sad  gaze  of  the 
cow,  in  the  lustrous  suffering  eyes  of  the  horse,  in  the 
noble  frank  faith  of  the  dog,  in  the  soft-bounding  glee  of 
the  lamb,  in  the  unwearied  toil  of  the  ass,  in  the  tender 
industry  of  the  bird,  she  had  sympathy  and  she  had 
example. 

Sho  loved  them  and  they  loved  her.  She  saw  that  they 
were  sinless,  diligent,  faithful,  devoted,  loyal  servers  of 
base  masters ;  loving  greatly,  and  for  their  love  goaded, 
beaten,  overtasked,  slaughtered. 

She  took  the  lesson  to  heart ;  and  hated  men  and 
women  with  a  bitter  hatred. 

So  she  had  grown  up  for  ten  years,  caring  for  no  human 
thing,  except  in  a  manner  for  the  old  man  Marceliin,  who 
was,  like  her,  proscribed. 

The  priests  had  striven  to  turn  her  soul  what  they  had 
termed  heavenward  ;  but  their  weapons  had  been  wrath 
and  intimidation.  She  would  have  none  of  them.  No 
efforts  that  they  or  her  grandsire  made  had  availed ;  she 
would  be  starved,  thrashed,  cursed,  maltreated  as  they 
would  ;  she  could  not  understand  their  meaning,  or  would 
not  submit  herself  to  their  religion. 

As  years  went  on  they  had  found  the  contest  hopeless, 
so  had  abandoned  her  to  the  devil,  who  had  made  her ; 
and  the  daughter  of  one  whom  the  whole  province  had 
called  saint  had  never  passed  within  church-doors  or 
known  the  touch  of  holy  water  save  when  they  had  cast 
it  on  her  as  an  exorcism.  And  when  she  met  a  priest 
in  the  open  roads  or  on  the  bypaths  of  the  fields,  she 
always  sang  in  loud  defiance  her  wildest  melodies. 


100  fOLLE-FARINE. 

Where  had  she  learnt  these  ? 

They  had  been  sung  to  her  by  Phratos,  and  taught  by 
him. 

Who  had  he  been  ? 

Her  old  life  was  obscure  to  her  memory,  and  yet 
glorious  even  in  its  dimness. 

She  did  not  know  who  those  people  had  been  with 
whom  she  had  wandered,  nor  in  what  land  they  had 
dwelt.  But  that  wondrous  free  life  remained  on  her  re- 
membrance as  a  thing  never  to  be  forgotten  or  to  be 
known  again ;  a  life  odorous  with  bursting  fruits  and 
budding  flowers ;  full  of  strangest  and  of  sweetest  music ; 
spent  forever  uuder  green  leaves  and  suns  that  had  no 
setting ;  forever  beside  fathomless  waters  and  winding 
forests ;  forever  rhymed  to  melody  and  soothed  to  the 
measure  of  deep  winds  and  drifting  clouds. 

For  she  had  forgotten  all  except  its  liberty  and  its  love- 
liness ;  and  the  old  gypsy  life  of  the  Liebana  remained 
with  her  only  as  some  stray  fragment  of  an  existence 
passed  in  another  world  from  which  she  was  now  an 
exile,  and  revived  in  her  only  in  the  fierce  passion  of  her 
nature,  in  her  bitter,  vague  rebellion,  in  her  longing  to  be 
free,  in  her  anguish  of  vain  desires  for  richer  hues  and 
bluer  skies  and  wilder  winds  than  those  amidst  which  she 
toiled.  At  times  she  remembered  likewise  the  songs  and 
the  melodies  of  Phratos ;  remembered  them  when  the 
moon  rays  swept  across  the  white  breadth  of  water-lilies, 
or  the  breath  of  spring  stole  through  the  awakening 
woods ;  and  when  she  remembered  them  she  wept — 
wept  bitterly,  where  none  could  look  on  her. 

She  never  thought  of  Phratos  as  a  man  ;  as  of  one  who 
had  lived  in  a  human  form  and  was  now  dead  in  an 
earthly  grave;  her  memory  of  him  was  of  some  nameless 
creature,  half  divine,  whose  footsteps  brought  laughter 
and  music,  with  eyes  bright  as  a  bird's,  yet  sad  as  a  dog's, 
and  a  voice  forever  singing  5  clad  in  goat's  hair,  and 
gigantic  and  gay  ;  a  creature  that  had  spoken  tenderly  to 
her,  that  had  bidden  her  laugh  and  rejoice,  that  had 
carried  her  when  she  was  weary ;  that  had  taught  her  to 
sleep  under  the  dewy  leaves,  and  to  greet  the  things  of 
the  night  as  soft  sisters,  and  to  fear  nothing  in  the  whole 


FOLLE-FARTNE.  101 

living  world,  in  the  earth,  or  tho-'ai",  or-the'S^y;'.anir  to 
tell  the  truth  though  a  falsehood  were  to  spare  the  bare 
feet  flintstones,  and  naked  shoulders  the  stick,  and  an 
empty  body  hunger  and  thirst.  A  creature  that  seemed 
to  her  in  her  memories  even  as  the  faun  seemed  to  the 
fancies  of  the  children  of  the  Piraeus ;  a  creature  half  man 
and  half  animal,  glad  and  grotesque,  full  of  mirth  and  of 
music,  belonging  to  the  forest,  to  the  brook,  to  the  stars, 
to  the  leaves,  wandering  like  the  wind,  and,  like  the  wind, 
homeless. 

This  was  all  her  memory;  but  she  cherished  it;  in 
the  face  of  the  priests  she  bent  her  straight  black  brows 
and  curled 'her  scornful  scarlet  lips,  but  for  the  sake  of 
Phratos  she  held  one  religion ;  though  she  hated  men 
she  told  them  never  a  lie,  and  asked  them  never  an 
alms. 

She  went  now  along  the  white  level  roads,  the  empty 
basket  balanced  on  her  head,  her  form  moving  with  the 
free  harmonious  grace  of  desert  women,  and  she  sang  as 
she  went  the  old  sweet  songs  of  the  broken  viol. 

She  was  friendless  and  desolate ;  she  was  ill  fed,  she 
was  heavily  tasked  ;  she  toiled  without  thanks  ;  she  was 
ignorant  of  even  so  much  knowledge  as  the  peasants 
about  her  had ;  she  was  without  a  past  or  a  future,  and 
her  present  had  in  it  but  daily  toil  and  bitter  words ; 
hunger,  and  thirst,  and  chastisement. 

Yet  for  all  that  she  sang ; — sang  because  the  vitality 
in  her  made  her  dauntless  of  all  evil ;  because  the  abun- 
dant life  opening  in  her  made  her  glad  in  despite  of  fate ; 
because  the  youth,  and  the  strength,  and  the  soul  that 
were  in  her  could  not  utterly  be  brutalized,  could  not 
wholly  cease  from  feeling  the  gladness  of  the  sun,  the 
coursing  of  the  breeze,  the  liberty  of  nature,  the  sweet 
quick  sense  of  living. 

Before  long  she  reached  the  spot  where  the  old  man 
Marcellin  was  breaking  stones. 

His  pile  was  raised  much  higher ;  he  sat  astride  on  a 
log  of  timber  and  hammered  the  flints  on  and  on,  on  and 
on,  without  looking  up;  the  dust  was  still  thick  on  the 
leaves  and  the  herbage  where  the  tramp  of  the  people 
had  raised  it ;  and  the  prayers  and  the  chants  had  failed 

9* 


l(Jg  FOLLE-FARINE. 

as  yet  lo  bring  pne;sjigh test  cloud,  one  faintest  rain  mist 
across  the  hot  unbroken  azure  of  the  skies. 

Marcellin  was  her  only  friend;  the  proscribed  always 
adhere  to  one  another ;  when  they  are  few  they  can  only 
brood  and  suffer,  harmlessly ;  when  they  are  many  they 
rise  as  with  one  foot  and  strike  as  with  one  hand.  There- 
fore, it  is  always  perilous  to  make  the  lists  of  any  pro- 
scription overloug. 

The  child,  who  was  also  an  outcast,  went  to  him  and 
paused  ;  in  a  curious,  lifeless  bitter  way  they  cared  for 
one  another ;  this  girl  who  had  grown  to  believe  herself 
born  of  hell,  and  this  man  who  had  grown  to  believe  that 
he  had  served  hell. 

With  the  bastard  Folle-Farine  and  with  the  regicide 
Marcellin  the  people  had  no  association,  and  for  them  no 
pity  ;  therefore  they  had  found  each  other  by  the  kinship 
of  proscription ;  and  in  a  way  there  was  love  between 
them. 

"  You  are  glad,  since  you  sing!"  said  the  old  man  to 
her,  as  she  passed  him  again  on  her  homeward  way,  and 
paused  again  beside  him. 

"  The  birds  in  cage  sing,"  she  answered  him.  "  But, 
think  you  they  are  glad  ?" 

"  Are  they  not?" 

She  sat  down  a  moment  beside  him,  on  the  bank  which 
was  soft  with  moss,  and  odorous  with  wild  flowers  curl- 
ing up  the  stems  of  the  poplars  and  straying  over  into 
the  corn  beyond. 

"  Are  they  ?  Look.  Yesterday  I  passed  a  cottage,  it 
is  on  the  great  south  road ;  far  away  from  here.  The 
house  was  empty ;  the  people,  no  doubt,  were  gone  to 
labor  in  the  fields ;  there  was  a  wicker  cage  hanging  to 
the  wall,  and  in  the  cage  there  was  a  blackbird.  The 
sun  beat  on  his  head ;  his  square  of  sod  was  a  dry  clod 
of  bare  earth ;  the  heat  had  dried  every  drop  of  water  in 
his  pan  ;  and  yet  the  bird  was  singing.  Singing  how  ? 
In  torment,  beating  his  breast  against  the  bars  till  the 
blood  started,  crying  to  the  skies  to  have  mercy  on  him 
and  to  let  rain  fall.  His  song  was  shrill ;  it  had  a  scream 
in  it ;  still  he  sang.     Do  you  say  the  merle  was  glad  ?" 

"  What  did  you  do  V  asked  the  old  man,  still  break- 


FOLLE-FARINE.  103 

ing  the  stones  with  a  monotonous  rise  and  fall  of  his 
hammer. 

il  I  took  the  cage  down  and  opened  the  door." 

"  And  he  F" 

"  He  shot  up  in  the  air  first,  then  dropped  down  amidst 
the  grasses,  where  a  little  brook  which  the  drought  had 
not  dried,  was  still  running ;  and  he  bathed  and  drank 
and  bathed  again,  seeming  mad  with  the  joy  of  the  water. 
When  I  lost  him  from  sight  he  was  swaying  on  a  bough 
among  the  leaves  over  the  river  ;  but  then  he  was  silent  1" 

"And  what  do  you  mean  by  that?" 

Her  eyes  clouded  ;  she  was  mute.  She  vaguely  knew 
the  meaning  it  bore  to  herself,  but  it  was  beyond  her  to 
express  it. 

All  things  of  nature  had  voices  and  parables  for  her, 
because  her  fancy  was  vivid  and  her  mind  was  dreamy ; 
but  that  mind  was  still  too  dark,  and  too  profoundly  igno- 
rant, for  her  to  be  able  to  shape  her  thoughts  into  meta- 
phor or  deduction. 

The  bird  had  spoken  to  her ;  by  his  silence  as  by  his 
song  ;  but  what  he  had  uttered  she  could  not  well  utter 
again.  Save,  indeed,  that  song  was  not  gladness,  and 
neither  was  silence  pain. 

Marcellin,  although  he  had  asked  her,  had  asked  need- 
lessly ;  for  he  also  knew. 

"And  what,  think  you,  the  people  said,  when  they 
went  back  and  found  the  cage  empty  ?"  he  pursued,  still 
echoing  his  words  and  hers  by  the  ringing  sound  of  the 
falling  hammer. 

A  smile  curled  her  lips. 

"That  was  no  thought  of  mine,"  she  said  carelessly. 
"  They  had  done  wickedly  to  cage  Mm  ;  to  set  him  free  I 
would  have  pulled  down  their  thatch,  or  stove  in  their 
door,  had  need  been." 

"  Good  !"  said  the  old  man  briefly,  with  a  gleam  of 
light  over  his  harsh  lean  face. 

He  looked  up  at  her  as  he  worked,  the  shivered  flints 
flying  right  and  left. 

"It  was  a  pity  to  make  you  a  woman,"  he  muttered, 
as  his  keen  gaze  swept  over  her. 

"  A  woman  !"     She  echoed  the  words  dully  and  half 


104  FOLLE-FARINE. 

wonderingly  ;  she  could  not  understand  it  in  connection 
with  herself. 

A  woman  ;  that  was  a  woman  who  sat  in  the  sun 
under  the  fig-tree,  working  her  lace  on  a  frame ;  that  was 
a  woman  who  leaned  out  of  her  lattice  tossing  a  red  car- 
nation to  her  lover ;  that  was  a  woman  who  swept  the 
open  porch  of  her  house,  singing  as  she  cleared  the  dust 
away  ;  that  was  a  woman  who  strode  on  her  blithe  way 
through  the  clover,  carrying  her  child  at  her  breast. 

She  seemed  to  have  no  likeness  to  them,  no  kindred 
with  them ;  she  a  beast  of  burden,  a  creature  soulless 
and  homeless,  an  animal  made  to  fetch  and  carry,  to  be 
cursed  and  beaten,  to  know  neither  love  nor  hope,  neither 
past  nor  future,  but  only  a  certain  dull  patience  and 
furious  hate,  a  certain  dim  pleasure  in  labor  and  indiffer- 
ence to  pain. 

"  It  was  a  pity  to  make  you  a  woman,"  said  the  old 
man  once  more.  "You  might  be  a  man  worth  something ; 
but  a  woman  ! — a  thing  that  has  no  medium  ;  no  haven 
between  hell  and  heaven  ;  no  option  save  to  sit  by  the 
hearth  to  watch  the  pot  boil  and  suckle  the  children,  or 
to  go  out  into  the  streets  and  the  taverns  to  mock  at  men 
and  to  murder  them.     Which  will  you  do  in  the  future  ?" 

"What?" 

She  scarcely  knew  the  meaning  of  the  word.  She  saw 
the  female  creatures  round  her  were  of  all  shades  of  age, 
from  the  young  girls  with  their  peachlike  cheeks  to  the 
old  crones  brown  and  withered  as  last  year's  nuts ;  she 
knew  that  if  she  lived  on  she  would  be  old  likewise  ;  but 
of  a  future  she  had  no  conception,  no  ideal.  She  had 
been  left  too  ignorant  to  have  visions  of  any  other  world 
hereafter  than  this  one  which  the  low  lying  green  hills 
and  the  arc  of  the  pale  blue  sky  shut  in  upon  her. 

She  had  one  desire,  indeed — a  desire  vague  but  yet 
fierce — the  desire  for  liberty.  But  it  was  such  desire  as 
the  bird  which  she  had  freed  had  known ;  the  desire  of 
instinct,  the  desire  of  existence  only  ;  her  mind  was 
powerless  to  conceive  a  future,  because  a  future  is  a 
hope,  and  of  hope  she  knew  nothing. 

The  old  man  glanced  at  her,  and  saw  that  she  had  not 
comprehended.     He  smiled  with  a  certain  bitter  pity. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  105 

"I  spoke  idly,"  he  said  to  himself;  "slaves  cannot 
have  a  future.     But  yet " 

Yet  he  saw  that  the  creature  who  was  so  ignorant  of 
her  own  powers,  of  her  own  splendors,  of  her  own 
possibilities,  had  even  now  a  beauty  as  great  as  that  of  a 
lustrous  Eastern-eyed  passion-flower;  and  he  knew  that 
to  a  woman  who  has  such  beauty  as  this  the  world  holds 
out  in  its  hand  the  tender  of  at  least  one  future — one 
election,  one  kingdom,  one  destiny. 

"Women  are  loved,"  she  said,  suddenly;  "will  any 
one  love  me  ?" 

Marcellin  smiled  bitterly. 

"  Many  will  love  you,  doubtless — as  the  wasp  loves 
the  peach  that  he  kisses  with  his  sting,  and  leaves  rotten 
to  drop  from  the  stem  !" 

She  was  silent  again,  revolving  his  meaning;  it  lay 
beyond  her,  both  in  the  peril  which  it  embodied  from 
others,  and  the  beauty  in  herself  which  it  implied.  She 
could  reach  no  conception  of  herself,  save  as  what  she 
now  was,  a  body-servant  of  toil,  a  beast  of  burden  like 
a  young  mule. 

"  But  all  shun  me,  as  even  the  wasp  shuns  the  bitter 
oak  apple,"  she  said,  slowly  and  dreamily ;  "  who  should 
love  me,  even  as  the  wasp  loves  the  peach  ?" 

Marcellin  smiled  his  grim  and  shadowy  smile!  He 
made  answer, — 

"Wait!" 

She  sat  mute  once  more,  revolving  this  strange,  brief 
word  in  her  thoughts — strange  to  her,  with  a  promise 
as  vague,  as  splendid,  and  as  incomprehensible  as  the 
prophecy  of  empire  to  a  slave. 

11  The  future?"  she  said,  at  last.  "  That  means  some- 
thing that  one  has  not,  and  that  is  to  come — is  it  so  ?" 

"  Something  that  one  never  has,  and  that  never  comes," 
muttered  the  old  man,  wearily  cracking  the  flints  in  two ; 
11  something  that  one  possesses  in  one's  sleep,  and  that  is 
farther  off  each  time  that  one  awakes ;  and  yet  a  thing 
that  one  sees  always — sees  even  when  one  lies  a-dying, 
they  say — for  men  are  fools." 

Folle-Farine  listened,  musing,  with  her  hands  clasped 
on  the  handle  of  her  empty  basket,  and  her  chin  resting 


106  FOLLE-FARINE. 

upon  them,  and  her  eyes  watching  a  maimed  butterfly 
drag  its  wings  of  emerald  and  diamond  through  the  hot, 
pale,  sickly  dust. 

"  I  dream  !"  she  said,  suddenly,  as  she  stooped  and 
lifted  the  wounded  insect  gently  on  to  the  edge  of  a  leaf. 
"  But  I  dream  wide  awake." 

Marcellin  smiled. 

"  Never  say  so.  They  will  think  you  mad.  That  is 
only  what  foolish  things,  called  poets,  do." 

"  What  is  a  poet  ?" 

"  A  foolish  thing,  I  tell  you — mad  enough  to  believe 
that  men  will  care  to  strain  their  eyes,  as  he  strains  his, 
to  see  the  face  of  a  God  who  never  looks  and  never 
listens." 

"Ah!" 

She  was  so  accustomed  to  be  told  that  all  she  did 
was  unlike  to  others,  and  was  either  wicked  or  was 
senseless,  that  she  saw  nothing  except  the  simple  state- 
ment of  a  fact  in  the  rebuke  which  he  had  given  her. 
She  sat  quiet,  gazing  down  into  the  thick  white  dust  of 
the  road,  bestirred  by  the  many  feet  of  mules  and  men 
that  had  trodden  through  it  since  the  dawn. 

"  I  dream  beautiful  things,"  she  pursued,  slowly.  "  In 
the  moonlight  most  often.  I  seem  to  remember,  when  I 
dream — so  much  !  so  much  !" 

'■  Remember — what  should  you  remember  ?  You  were 
but  a  baby  when  they  brought  you  hither." 

"  So  they  say.  But  I  might  live  before,  in  my  father's 
kingdom — in  the  devil's  kingdom.     Why  not?" 

Why  not,  indeed !  Perhaps  we  all  lived  there  once  ; 
and  that  is  why  we  all  through  all  our  lives  hanker  to 
get  back  to  it. 

u  I  ask  him  so  often  to  take  me  back,  but  he  does  not 
seem  ever  to  hear." 

"  Chut !  He  will  hear  in  his  own  good  time.  The 
devil  never  passes  by  a  woman." 

"  A  woman  !"  she  repeated.  The  word  seemed  to  have 
no  likeness  and  no  fitness  with  herself. 

A  woman  ! — she  ! — a  creature  made  to  be  beaten,  and 
sworn  at,  and  shunned,  and  loaded  like  a  mule,  and 
driven  like  a  bullock ! 


FOLLE-FARINE.  107 

"  Look  you,"  said  the  old  man,  resting  his  hammer  for 
a  moment,  and  wiping  the  sweat  from  his  brow,  "  I 
have  lived  in  this  vile  place  forty  years.  I  remember  the 
woman  that  they  say  bore  you — Reine  Flamma.  She 
was  a  beautiful  woman,  and  pure  as  snow,  and  noble,  and 
innocent.  She  wearied  God  incessantly.  I  have  seen 
her  stretched  for  hours  at  the  foot  of  that  cross.  She  was 
wretched ;  and  she  entreated  her  God  to  take  away  her 
monotonous  misery,  and  to  give  her  some  life  new  and 
fair.  But  God  never  answered.  He  left  her  to  herself. 
It  was  the  devil  that  heard — and  replied." 

"Then,  is  the  devil  juster  than  their  God?" 

Marcellin  leaned  his  hammer  on  his  knees  and  his  voice 
rose  clear  and  strong  as  it  had  done  of  yore  from  the 
Tribune. 

"  He  looks  so,  at  the  least.  It  is  his  wisdom,  and  that 
is  why  his  following  is  so  large.  Nay,  1  say,  when  God 
is  deaf  the  devil  listens.  That  is  his  wisdom,  see  you. 
So  often  the  poor  little  weak  human  soul,  striving  to  find 
the  right  way,  cries  feebly  for  help,  and  none  answer. 
The  poor  little  weak  soul  is  blind  and  astray  in  the  busy 
streets  of  the  world.  It  lifts  its  voice,  but  its  voice  is  so 
young  and  so  feeble,  like  the  pipe  of  a  newly-born  bird  in 
the  dawn,  that  it  is  drowned  in  the  shouts  and  the  mani- 
fold sounds  of  those  hard,  crowded,  cruel  streets,  where 
every  one  is  for  himself,  and  no  man  has  ears  for  his 
neighbor.  It  is  hungered,  it  is  athirst,  it  is  sorrowful,  it 
is  blinded,  it  is  perplexed,  it  is  afraid.  It  cries  often,  but 
God  and  man  leave  it  to  itself.  Then  the  devil,  who 
harkens  always,  and  who,  though  all  the  trumpets  blow- 
ing their  brazen  music  in  the  streets  bray  in  his  honor, 
yet  is  too  wise  to  lose  even  the  slightest  sound  of  any  in 
distress — since  of  such  are  the  largest  sheaves  of  his 
harvest — comes  to  the  little  soul,  and  teaches  it  with  ten- 
derness, and  guides  it  towards  the  paths  of  gladness,  and 
fills  its  lips  with  the  bread  of  sweet  passions,  and  its  nos- 
trils with  the  savor  of  fair  vanities,  and  blows  in  its  ear 
the  empty  breath  of  men's  lungs,  till  that  sickly  wind 
seems  divinest  music.  Then  is  the  little  soul  dazzled 
and  captured,  and  made  the  devil's  for  evermore  ;  half 
through  its  innocence,  half  through  its  weakness;  but 


108  FOLLE-FARINE. 

chiefly  of  all  because  God  and  man  would  not  hear  its 
cries  whilst  yet  it  was  sinless  and  only  astray." 

He  ceased,  and  the  strokes  of  his  hammer  rang  again 
on  the  sharp  flint  stones. 

She  had  listened  with  her  lips  parted  breathlessly,  and 
her  nightlike  eyes  dilated. 

In  the  far  distant  time,  when  he  had  been  amidst  the 
world  of  men,  he  had  known  how  to  utter  the  words  that 
burned,  and  charm  to  stillness  a  raging  multitude.  He 
had  not  altogether  lost  this  power,  at  such  rare  times 
as  he  still  cared  to  break  his  silence,  and  to  unfold  the 
unforgotten  memories  of  a  life  long  dead.  He  would 
speak  thus  to  her,  but  to  no  other. 

Folle-Farine  listened,  mute  and  breathless,  her  great 
eyes  uplifted  to  the  sun,  where  it  was  sinking  westward 
through  a  pomp  of  golden  and  of  purple  cloud.  He  was 
the  only  creature  who  ever  spoke  to  her  as  though  she 
likewise  were  human,  and  she  followed  his  words  with 
dumb  unquestioning  faith,  as  a  dog  its  master's  foot- 
steps. 

"  The  soul !  What  is  the  soul  ?"  she  muttered,  at 
length. 

He  caught  in  his  hand  the  beautiful  diamond-winged 
butterfly,  which  now,  freed  of  the  dust  and  drinking  in 
the  sunlight,  was  poised  on  a  foxglove  in  the  hedge  near 
him,  and  held  it  against  the  light. 

"  What  is  it  that  moves  this  creature's  wings,  and 
glances  in  its  eyes,  and  gives  it  delight  in  the  summer's 
warmth,  in  the  orchid's  honey,  and  in  the  lime-tree's 
leaves?  I  do  not  know  ;  but  I  know  that  I  can  kill  it — 
with  one  grind  of  my  heel.  So  much  we  know  of  the 
soul — no  more." 

She  freed  it  from  his  hand. 

"  Whoever  made  it,  then,  was  cruel.  If  he  could  give 
it  so  much  power,  why  not  have  given  it  a  little  more,  so 
that  it  could  escape  you  always  ?" 

"  You  ask  what  men  have  asked  ten  times  ten  thou- 
sand years — since  the  world  began — without  an  answer. 
Because  the  law  of  all  creation  is -cruelty,  I  suppose; 
because  the  dust  of  death  is  always  the  breath  of  life. 
The  great  man,  dead,  changes  to  a  million  worms,  and 


FOLLE-FARINE.  109 

lives  again  in  the  juices  of  the  grass  above  his  grave. 
It  matters  little.  The  worms  destroy  ;  the  grasses  nourish. 
Few  great  men  do  more  than  the  iirst,  or  do  as  much  as 
the  last." 

"But  get  you  homeward,"  he  continued,  breaking  off 
his  parable;  "it  is  two  hours  past  noon,  and  if  you  be 
late  on  the  way  you  pay  for  it  with  your  body.  Begone." 

She  nodded  her  head,  and  went;  he  seldom  used  gentle 
words  to  her,  and  yet  she  knew,  in  a  vague  way,  that  he 
cared  for  her  ;  moreover,  she  rejoiced  in  that  bitter,  caustic 
contempt  in  which  he,  the  oldest  man  amidst  them,  held 
all  men.' 

His  words  were  the  only  thing  that  had  aroused  her 
dulled  brain  to  its  natural  faculties;  in  a  manner,  from 
him  she  had  caught  something  of  knowledge — some- 
thing, too,  of  intellect;  he  alone  prevented  her  from 
sinking  to  that  absolute  unquestioning  despair  which 
surely  euds  in  idiocy  or  in  self-murder. 

She  pursued  her  way  in  silence  across  the  fields,  and 
along  the  straight  white  road,  and  across  a  wooden  bridge 
that  spanned  the  river,  to  her  home. 

There  wras  a  gentler  luster  in  her  eyes,  and  her  mouth 
had  the  faint  light  of  a  half  smile  upon  it;  she  did  not 
know  what  hope  meant ;  it  never  seemed  possible  to  her 
that  her  fate  could  be  other  than  it  was,  since  so  long  the 
messengers  and  emissaries  of  her  father's  empire  had  been 
silent  and  leaden-footed  to  her  call. 

Yet,  in  a  manner,  she  was  comforted,  for  had  not  two 
mouths  that  day  bidden  her  "  wait"  ? 

She  entered  at  length  the  little  wood  of  Ypres,  and 
heard  that  rush  and  music  of  the  deep  mill  water  which 
was  the  sole  thing  she  had  learned  to  love  in  all  the 
place. 

Beyond  it  were  the  apple  orchards  and  fruit  gardens 
which  rendered  Claudis  Flamma  back  full  recompense 
for  all  the  toil  they  cost  him — recompense  so  large,  in- 
deed, that  many  disbelieved  in  that  poverty  which  he 
was  wont  to  aver  weighed  so  hardly  and  so  lightly  on 
him.  Both  were  now  rich  in  all  their  maturer  abundance, 
since  the  stream  which  rushed  through  them  had  saved 

10 


110  FOLLE-FARINE. 

them  from  the  evil  effects  of  the  long  drought  so  severely 
felt  in  all  other  districts. 

The  cherry-trees  were  scarlet  with  their  latest  fruit ; 
the  great  pumpkins  glowed  among  their  leaves  in  tawny 
orange  heaps ;  little  russet-breasted  bullfinches  beat  their 
wings  vainly  at  the  fine  network  that  enshrouded  the 
paler  gold  of  the  wall  apricots  ;  a  gray  cat  was  stealing 
among  the  delicate  yellows  of  the  pear-shaped  marrows ; 
where  a  round  green  wrinkled  melon  lay  a-ripeningin  the 
sun,  a  gorgeous  dragon-fly  was  hovering,  and  a  mother- 
mavis,  in  her  simple  coif  of  brown  and  white  a,nd  gray, 
was  singing  with  all  the  gladness  of  her  sunny  summer 

joys. 

Beyond  a  hedge  of  prickly  thorn  the  narrower  flower- 
garden  stretched,  spanned  by  low  stone  walls,  made 
venerable  by  the  silvery  beards  of  lichens ;  and  the 
earth  was  full  of  color  from  the  crimson  and  the  golden 
gladioli;  from  the  carmine-hued  carnations;  from  the 
deep-blue  lupins,  and  the  Gloire  de  Dijon  roses ;  from  the 
green  slender  stems  and  the  pure  white  cups  of.  the  vir- 
ginal lilies;  and  from  the  gorgeous  beetles,  with  their  purple 
tunics  and  their  shields  of  bronze,  like  Grecian  hoplites 
drawn  in  battle  array.  While  everywhere,  above  this 
sweet  glad  garden  world,  the  butterflies,  purple  and 
jeweled,  the  redstarts  in  their  ruby  dress,  the  dainty 
azure-winged  and  blue  warblers,  the  golden-girdled  wasp 
with  his  pinions  light  as  mist,  and  the  velvet-coated  bee 
with  his  pleasant  harvest  song,  flew  ever  in  the  sunlight, 
murmuring,  poising,  praising,  rejoicing. 

The  place  was  beautiful  in  its  own  simple,  quiet  way ; 
lying  in  a  hollow,  where  the  river  tumbled  down  in  two 
or  three  short  breaks  and  leaps  which  broke  its  habitual 
smooth  and  sluggish  form,  and  brought  it  in  a  sheet  of 
dark  water  and  with  a  million  foam-bells  against  the 
walls  of  the  mill-house  and  under  the  ponderous  wheels. 

The  wooden  house  itself  also  wras  picturesque  in  the 
old  fashion  when  men  builded  their  dwellings  slowly  and 
for  love;  common  with  all  its  countless  carvings  black  by 
age,  its  jutting  beams  sbapen  into  grotesque  human  like- 
ness and  tragic  masks  ;  its  parquetted  work  run  over  by 
the  green  cups  of  stoneworts,  and  its  high  roof  with  deep 


FOLLE-FARINE.  HI 

shelving  eaves  bright  with  diapered  tiles  of  blue  and 
white  and  rose,  and  alive  all  day  with  curling  swallows, 
with  pluming  pigeons,  with  cooing  doves. 

It  was  beautiful;  and  the  heart  of  Reine  Flauima's 
young  daughter  doubtless  would  have  clung  to  it  with 
all  a  child's  instinct  of  love  and  loyalty  to  its  home  had 
it  not  been  to  her  only  a  prison-house  wherein  three  bit- 
ter jailers  forever  ruled  her  with  a  rod  of  iron — bigotry 
and  penury  and  cruelty. 

She  flung  herself  down  a  moment  in  the  garden,  on  the 
long  grass  under  a  mulberry-tree,  ere  she  went  in  to  give 
her  account  of  the  fruit  sold  and  the  moneys  brought  by 
her. 

She  had  been  on  foot  since  four  o'clock  in  the  dawn  of 
that  sultry  day;  her  only  meal  had  been  a  bowl  of  cold 
milk  and  a  hunch  of  dry  bread  crushed  in  her  strong 
small  teeth.  She  had  toiled  hard  at  such  bodily  labor  as 
was  set  to  her ;  to  domestic  work,  to  the  work  of  the 
distaff  and  spindle,  of  the  stove  and  the  needle,  they  had 
never  been  able  to  break  her ;  they  had  found  that  she 
would  be  beaten  black  and  blue  ere  she  would  be  bound 
to  it;  but  against  open  air  exertion  she  had  never  re- 
belled, and  she  had  in  her  all  the  strength  and  the  swift- 
ness of  the  nomadic  race  of  the  Liebana,  and  had  not 
their  indolence  and  their  dishonesty. 

She  was  very  hungry,  she  was  again  thirsty ;  yet  she 
did  not  break  off  a  fruit  from  any  bough  about  her ;  she 
did  not  steep  her  hot  lips  in  any  one  of  the  cool  juicy 
apricots  which  studded  the  stones  of  the  wall  beyond  her. 

No  one  had  ever  taught  her  honesty,  except  indeed  in 
that  dim  4ead  time  when  Phratos  had  closed  her  small 
hands  in  his  whenever  they  had  stretched  out  to  some 
forbidden  thing,  and  had  said,  "  Take  the  goods  the  gods 
give  thee,  but  steal  not  from  men."  And  yet  honest  she 
was,  by  reason  of  the  fierce  proud  savage  independence 
in  her,  and  her  dim  memories  of  that  sole  friend  loved 
and  lost. 

She  wanted  many  a  thiog,  many  a  time — nay,  nearly 
every  hour  that  she  lived,  she  wanted  those  sheer  neces- 
saries which  make  life  endurable ;  but  she  had  taught 
herself  to  do  without  them  rather  than  owe  them,  by 


112  FOLLE-FARINE 

pra)rer  or  by  plunder,  to  that  human  race  which  she  hated, 
and  to  which  she  always  doubted  her  own  kinship. 

Buried  in  the  grass,  she  now  abandoned  herself  to  the 
bodily  delights  of  rest,  of  shade,  of  coolness,  of  sweet 
odors ;  the  scent  of  the  fruits  and  flowers  was  heavy  on 
the  air ;  the  fall  of  the  water  made  a  familiar  tempestuous 
music  on  her  ear ;  and  her  fancy,  poetic  still,  though 
deadened  by  a  life  of  ignorance  and  toil,  was  stirred  by 
the  tender  tones  of  the  numberless  birds  that  sang  about 
her. 

11  The  earth  and  the  air  are  good,"  she  thought,  as  she 
lay  there  watching  the  dark  leaves  sway  in  the  foam  and 
the  wind,  and  the  bright-bosomed  birds  float  from  blos- 
som to  blossom. 

For  there  was  latent  in  her,  all  untaught,  that  old  pan- 
theistic instinct  of  the  divine  age,  when  the  world  was 
young,  to  behold  a  sentient  consciousness  in  every  leaf 
unfolded  to  the  light ;  to  see  a  soul  in  every  created  thing 
the  day  shines  on  ;  to  feel  the  presence  of  an  eternal  life 
in  every  breeze  that  moves,  in  every  grass  that  grows; 
in  every  flame  that  lifts  itself  to  heaven  ;  in  every  bell 
that  vibrates  on  the  air ;  in  every  moth  that  soars  to 
reach  the  stars. 

Pantheism  is  the  religion  of  the  poet ;  and  nature  had 
made  her  a  poet,  though  man  as  yet  had  but  made  of  her 
an  outcast,  a  slave,  and  a  beast  of  burden. 

"The  earth  and  the  air  are  good,"  she  thought,  watch- 
ing the  sunrays  pierce  the  purple  heart  of  a  passion-flower, 
the  shadows  move  across  the  deep  brown  water,  the 
radiant  butterfly  alight  upon  a  lily,  the  scarlet-throated 
birds  dart  in  and  out  through  the  yellow  feathery  blos- 
soms of  the  limes. 

All  birds  were  her  friends. 

Phratos  had  taught  her  in  her  infancy  many  notes  of 
their  various  songs,  and  many  ways  and  means  of  luring 
them  to  come  and  rest  upon  her  shoulder  and  peck  the 
berries  in  her  hand. 

She  had  lived  so  much  in  tb£  open  fields  and  among 
the  woods  that  she  had  made  her  chief  companions  of 
them.  She  could  emulate  so  deftly  all  their  voices,  from 
the  call  of  the  wood  dove  to  the  chant  of  the   blackbird, 


FOLLE-FARINE.  113 

and  from  the  trill  of  the  nightingale  to  the  twitter  of  the 
titmouse,  that  she  could  summon  them  all  to  her  at  will, 
and  have  dozens  of  them  fluttering  around  her  head  and 
swaying  their  pretty  bodies  on  her  wrist. 

It  was  one  of  her  ways  that  seemed  to  the  peasantry  so 
weird  and  magical,  and  they  would  come  home  from  their 
fields  on  a  spring  daybreak  and  tell  their  wives  in  horror 
how  they  had  seen  the  devil's  daughter  in  the  red  flush 
of  the  sunrise,  ankle-deep  in  violets,  and  covered  with 
birds  from  head  to  foot,  hearing  their  whispers,  and 
giving  them  her  messages  to  carry  in  return. 

One  meek-eyed  woman  had  dared  once  to  say  that  St. 
Francis  had  done  as  much  and  it  had  been  accredited  to 
him  as  a  fair  action  and  virtuous  knowledge,  but  she  was 
frowned  down  and  chattered  down  by  her  louder  neigh- 
bors, who  told  her  that  she  might  look  for  some  sharp 
judgment  of  heaven  for  daring  to  couple  together  the 
blessed  name  of  the  holy  saint  and  the  accursed  name  of 
this  foul  spirit. 

But  all  they  could  say  could  not  break  the  charmed  com- 
munion between  Folle-Farine  and  her  feathered  comrades. 

She  loved  them  and  they  her.  In  the  hard  winter  she 
had  always  saved  some  of  her  scanty  meal  for  them,  and 
in  the  springtime  and  the  summer  they  always  rewarded 
her  with  floods  of  songs  and  soft  caresses  from  their  nest- 
ling wings. 

There  were  no  rare  birds,  no  birds  of  moor  and 
mountain,  in  that  cultivated  and  populous  district;  but 
to  her  all  the  little  home-bred  things  of  pasture  and  or- 
chard were  full  of  poetry  and  of  characters. 

The  robins  with  that  pretty  air  of  boldness  with  which 
they  veil  their  real  shyness  and  timidity ;  the  strong  and 
saucy  sparrows,  powerful  by  the  strength  of  all  mediocri- 
ties and  majorities ;  all  the  dainty  families  of  finches  in 
their  gay  apparelings ;  the  plain  brown  bird  that  fills  the 
night  with  music;  the  gorgeous  oriole  ruffling  in  gold, 
the  gilded  princeling  of  them  all ;  the  little  blue  warblers, 
the  violets  of  the  air ;  the  kingfishers  that  have  hovered 
so  long  over  the  forget-me-nots  upon  the  rivers  that  they 
have  caught  the  colors  of  the  flowers  on  their  wings;  the 
bright  blackcaps  green  as  the  leaves,  with  their  yellow 

10* 


114  FOLLE-FARINE. 

waistcoats  and  velvet  hoods,  the  innocent  freebooters  of 
the  woodland  liberties  ;  all  these  were  her  friends  and 
lovers,  various  as  any  human  crowds  of  court  or  city. 

She  loved  them ;  they  and  the  fourfooted  beasts  were 
the  sole  things  that  did  not  flee  from  her;  and  the  woeful 
and  mad  slaughter  of  them  by  the  peasants  was  to  her  a 
grief  passionate  in  its  despair.  She  did  not  reason  on  what 
she  felt ;  but  to  her  a  bird  slain  was  a  trust  betrayed,  an 
innocence  defiled,  a  creature  of  heaven  struck  to  earth. 

Suddenly  on  the  silence  of  the  garden  there  was  a  little 
shrill  sound  of  pain  ;  the  birds  flew  high  in  air,  screaming 
and  startled;  the  leaves  of  a  bough  of  ivy  shook  as  with 
a  struggle.  She  rose  and  looked ;  a  line  of  twine  was 
trembling  against  the  foliage ;  in  its  noosed  end  the  throat 
of  the  mavis  had  been  caught;  it  hung  trembling  and 
clutching  at  the  air  convulsively  with  its  little  drawn  up 
feet.  It  had  flown  into  the  trap  as  it  had  ended  its  joyous 
song  and  soared  up  to  join  its  brethren. 

There  were  a  score  of  such  traps  set  in  the  miller's 
garden. 

She  unloosed  the  cord  from  about  its  tiny  neck,  set  it 
free,  and  laid  it  down  upon  the  ivy ;  the  succor  came  too 
late  ;  the  little  gentle  body  was  already  without  breath  ; 
the  feet  had  ceased  to  beat  the  air ;  the  small  soft  head 
had  drooped  feebly  on  one  side ;  the  lifeless  eyes  had 
started  from  their  sockets ;  the  throat  was  without  song 
for  evermore. 

u  The  earth  would  be  good  but  for  men,"  she  thought, 
as  she  stood  with  the  little  dead  bird  in  her  hand. 

Its  mate,  which  was  poised  on  a  rose  bough,  flew 
straight  to  it,  and  curled  round  and  round  about  the 
small  slain  body,  and  piteously  bewailed  its  fate,  and 
mourned,  refusing  to  be  comforted,  agitating  the  air  with 
trembling  wings,  and  giving  out  vain  cries  of  grief. 

Yain  ;  for  the  little  joyous  life  was  gone ;  the  life  that 
asked  only  of  God  and  Man  a  home  in  the  green  leaves ; 
a  drop  of  dew  from  the  cup  of  a  rose ;  a  bough  to  swing 
on  in  the  sunlight;  a  summer  day  to  celebrate  in  song. 

All  the  winter  through,  it  had  borne  cold  and  hunger 
and  pain  without  lament;  it  had  saved  the  soil  from  de- 
stroying larvae,  and  purified  the  trees  from  all  foul  germs ; 


FOLLEFA  RINE.  115 

it  had  built  its  little  home  unaided,  and  had  fed  its  nestlings 
without  alms  ;  it  had  given  its  sweet  song  lavishly  to  the 
winds,  to  the  blossoms,  to  the  empty  air,  to  the  deaf  ears 
of  men ;  and  now  it  lay  dead  in  its  innocence ;  trapped 
and  slain  because  a  human  greed  begrudged  it  a  berry 
worth  the  thousandth  part  of  a  copper  coin. 

Out  from  the  porch  of  the  mill-house  CJaudis  Flamma 
came,  with  a  knife  in  his  hand  and  a  basket  to  cut  lilies 
for  one  of  the  choristers  of  the  cathedral,  since  the  morrow 
would  be  the  religious  feast  of  the  Visitation  of  Mary. 

He  saw  the  dead  thrush  in  her  hand,  and  chuckled  as 
he  went  by  to  himself. 

"  The  tenth  bird  trapped  since  sunrise,"  he  said,  think- 
ing how  shrewd  and  how  sure  in  their  make  were  these 
traps  of  twine  that  he  set  in  the  grass  and  the  leaves. 

She  said  nothing ;  but  a  darkness  of  disgust  swept  over 
her  face,  as  he  came  in  sight  in  the  distance. 

She  knelt  down  and  scraped  a  hole  in  the  earth  and 
laid  moss  in  it  and  put  the  mavis  softly  on  its  green  and 
fragrant  bier,  and  covered  it  with  handfuls  of  fallen  rose 
leaves  and  with  a  sprig  or  two  of  thyme.  Around  her 
head  the  widowed  thrush  flew  ceaselessly,  uttering  sad 
cries; — who  now  should  wander  with  him  through  the 
sunlight? — who  now  should  rove  with  him  above  the 
blossoming  fields  ? — who  now  should  sit  with  him  beneath 
the  boughs  hearing  the  sweet  rain  fall  between  the  leaves? 
— who  now  should  wake  with  him  whilst  yet  the  world 
was  dark,  to  feel  the  dawn  break  ere  the  east  were  red, 
and  sing  a  welcome  to  the  unborn  day  ? 


CHAPTER   IV. 


Meanwhile  Claudis  Flamma  cut  the  lilies  for  the 
cathedral  altars,  muttering  many  holy  prayers  as  he 
gathered  the  flowers  of  Mary. 

When  the  white  lily  sheaves  had  been  borne  away, 
kept  fresh  in  wet  moss  by  the  young  chorister  who  had 
been  sent  for  them,  the  miller  turned  to  her. 


116  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

"  Where  is  the  money  ?" 

She,  standing  beside  the  buried  bird,  undid  the  leathern 
thong  about  her  waist,  opened  the  pouch,  and  counted 
out  the  coins,  one  by  one,  on  the  flat  stone  of  a  water- 
tank  among  the  lilies  and  the  ivy. 

There  were  a  few  silver  pieces  of  slight  value  and  some 
dozens  of  copper  ones.  The  fruit  had  been  left  at  various 
stalls  and  houses  in  small  portions,  for  it  was  the  custom 
to  supply  it  fresh  each  day. 

He  caught  them  up  with  avidity,  bit  and  tested  each, 
counted  them  again  and  again,  and  yet  again ;  after  the 
third  enumeration  he  turned  sharply  on  her : 

"  There  are  two  pieces  too  little :  what  have  you  done 
with  them  ?" 

"  There  are  two  sous  short,"  she  answered  him  curtly. 
"  Twelve  of  the  figs  for  the  tanner  Florian  were  rotten." 

"  Rotten  ! — they  were  but  overripe." 

"  It  is  the  same  thing." 

"  You  dare  to  answer  me  ? — animal  I  I  say  they  had 
only  tasted  a  little  too  much  of  the  sun.  It  only  made 
them  the  sweeter." 

"  They  were  rotten." 

"  They  were  not. ,  You  dare  to  speak !  If  they  had 
been  rotten  they  lay  under  the  others ;  he  could  not  have 
seen " 

"I  saw." 

"  You  saw  !  Who  are  you  ? — a  beggar — a  beast — a 
foul  offspring  of  sin.  You  dared  to  show  them  to  him,  I 
will  warrant?" 

"  I  showed  him  that  they  were  not  good." 

"And  gave  him  back  the  two  sous?" 

"  I  took  seven  sous  for  what  were  good.  I  took  nothing 
for  the  rotten  ones." 

"  Wretch  !  you  dare  to  tell  me  that !" 

A  smile  careless  and  sarcastic  curled  her  mouth ;  her 
eyes  looked  at  him  with  all  their  boldest  fiercest  luster. 

"  I  never  steal — not  even  from  you,  good  Flamma." 

"You  have  stolen  now!"  he  shrieked,  his  thin  and 
feeble  voice  rising  in  fury  at  his  lost  coins  and  his  dis- 
covered treachery.  "  It  is  a  lie  that  the  figs  were  rotten  ; 
it  is  a  lie  that  you  took  but  seven  sous.     You  stole  the 


FOLLE-FARINE.  \\% 

two  sous  to  buy  you  bread  and  honey  in  the  streets,  or 
to  get  a  drink  at  the  wineshops.  I  know  you  ;  I  know 
you  ;  it  is  a  devil's  device  to  please  your  gluttonous  appe- 
tite. The  figs  rotten  ! — not  so  rotten  as  is  your  soul 
would  they  be,  though  they  were  black  as  night  and 
though  they  stunk  as  river  mud  I  Go  back  to  Denis 
Florian  and  bring  me  the  two  sous,  or  I  will  thrash  you 
as  a  thief." 

She  laughed  a  hard,  scornful,  reckless  laughter. 

u  You  can  thrash  me ;  you  cannot  make  me  a  thief." 

u  You  will  not  go  back  to  Florian  ?" 

"  I  will  not  ask  him  to  pay  for  what  was  bad." 

"  You  will  not  confess  that  you  stole  the  money  V9 

"I  should  lie  if  I  did." 

"Then  strip." 

She  set  her  teeth  in  silence ;  and  without  a  moment's 
hesitation  unloosened  the  woolen  sash  knotted  round  her 
waist,  and  pushed  down  the  coarse  linen  shirt  from 
about  her  throat. 

The  white  folds  fell  from  off  the  perfect  curves  of  her 
brown  arms,  and  left  bare  her  shining  shoulders  beauti- 
ful as  any  sculptured  Psyche's. 

She  was  not  conscious  of  degradation  in  her  punish- 
ment ;  she  had  been  bidden  to  bow  her  head  and  endure 
the  lash  from  the  earliest  years  she  could  remember. 
According  to  the  only  creed  she  knew,  silence  and  forti- 
tude and  strength  were  the  greatest  of  all  the  virtues. 
She  stood  now  in  the  cross-lights  among  the  lilies  as  she 
had  stood  when  a  little  child,  erect,  unquailing,  and 
ready  to  suffer,  insensible  of  humiliation  because  uncon- 
scious of  sin,  and  because  so  tutored  by  severity  and  ex- 
posure that  she  had  as  yet  none  of  the  shy  shame  and 
the  fugitive  shrinking  of  her  sex. 

She  had  only  the  boldness  to  bear,  the  courage  to  be 
silent,  which  she  had  had  when  she  had  stood  among 
the  same  tall  lilies,  in  the  same  summer  radiance,  in  the 
years  of  her  helpless  infancy. 

She  uncovered  herself  to  the  lash  as  a  brave  hound 
crouches  to  it;  not  from  inborn  cowardice,  but  simply 
from  the  habit  of  obedience  and  of  endurance. 

He  had  ever  used  her  as  the  Greeks  the  Helots  ;  he 


1 1 8  FOLLE-FA  RINE. 

always  beat  her  when  she  was  in  fault  to  teach  her  to  be 
faultless,  and  when  without  offense  beat  her  to  remind 
her  that  she  was  the  offspring  of  humiliation  and  a  slave. 

He  took,  as  he  had  taken  in  an  earlier  time,  a  thick 
rope  which  lay  coiled  upon  the  turf  ready  for  the  binding 
of  some  straying  boughs ;  and  struck  her  with  it,  slowly. 
His  arm  had  lost  somewhat  of  its  strength,  and  his 
power  was  unequal  to  his  will.  Still  rage  for  the  loss 
of  his  copper  pieces  and  the  sense  that  she  had  discovered 
the  fraudulent  intention  of  his  small  knavery  lent  force 
to  his  feebleness ;  as  the  scourge  whistled  through  the 
air  and  descended  on  her  shoulders  it  left  bruised  swollen 
marks  to  stamp  its  passage,  and  curling,  adder-like,  bit 
and  drew  blood. 

Yet  to  the  end  she  stood  mute  and  motionless,  as  she 
had  stood  in  her  childhood  ;  not  a  nerve  quivered,  not  a 
limb  flinched;  the -color  rushed  over  her  bent  face  and 
her  bare  bosom,  but  she  never  made  a  movement;  she 
never  gave  a  sound. 

When  his  arm  dropped  from  sheer  exhaustion,  she 
still  said  not  one  word ;  she  drew  tight  once  more  the 
sash  about  her  waist,  and  fastened  afresh  the  linen  of 
her  bodice. 

The  bruised  and  wounded  flesh  smarted  and  ached  and 
throbbed ;  but  she  was  used  to  such  pain,  and  bore  it  as 
their  wounds  were  borne  by  the  women  of  the  Spartan 
games. 

u  Thy  two  sous  have  borne  thee  bitterness,"  he  mut- 
tered with  a  smile.  "  Thou  wilt  scarce  find  fruit  rotten 
again  in  haste.  There  are  bread  and  beans  within ; 
go  get  a  meal ;  I  want  the  mule  to  take  flour  to  Bar- 
bizene." 

She  did  not  go  within  to  eat ;  the  bruises  and  the 
burning  of  her  skin  made  her  feel  sick  and  weak.  She 
went  away  and  cast  herself  at  full  length  in  the  shade  of 
the  long  grasses  of  the  orchard,  resting  her  chin  upon  her 
hands,  cooling  her  aching  breast  against  the  soft  damp 
moss;  thinking,  thinking,  thinking,  of  what  she  hardly 
knew,  except  indeed  that  she  wished  that  she  were  dead, 
like  the  bird  she  had  covered  with  the  rose  leaves. 

He  did  not  leave  her  long  to  even  so  much  peace  as 


FOLLE-FA  RINE.  \  \  9 

this ;  his  shrill  voice  soon  called  her  from  her  rest ;  he 
bade  her  get  ready  the  mule  and  go. 

She  obeyed. 

The  mule  was  saddled  with  his  wooden  pack;  as  many 
sacks  as  he  could  carry  were  piled  upon  the  framework ; 
she  put  her  hand  upon  his  bridle,  and  set  out  to  walk  to 
Barbizene,  which  was  two  leagues  away. 

"  Work  is  the  only  thing  to  drive  the  devil  that  begat 
her  out  of  her,"  muttered  the  miller,  as  he  watched  the 
old  mule  pace  down  the  narrow  tree-shadowed  road  that 
led  across  the  fields:  and  he  believed  that  he  did  rightly 
in  this  treatment  of  her. 

It  gratified  the  sharp  hard  cruelty  of  temper  in  him, 
indeed,  but  he  did  not  think  that  in  such  self-indulgence  he 
ever  erred.  He  was  a  bitter,  cunning,  miserly  old  man, 
whose  solitary  tenderness  of  feeling  and  honesty  of  pride 
had  been  rooted  out  forever  when  he  had  learned  the  dis- 
honor of  the  woman  whom  he  had  deemed  a  saint.  In 
the  ten  j%ars  of  time  which  had  passed  since  first  the 
little  brown,  large-eyed  child  had  been  sent  to  seek  asy- 
lum with  him,  he  had  grown  harder  and  keener  and  more 
severe  with  each  day  that  rose. 

Her  presence  was  abhorrent  to  him,  though  he  kept 
her,  partly  from  a  savage  sense  of  duty,  partly  from  the 
persuasion  that  she  had  the  power  in  her  to  make  the 
strongest  and  the  cheapest  slave  he  had  ever  owned. 

For  the  rest,  he  sincerely  and  devoutly  believed  that 
the  devil,  in  some  witchery  of  human  guise,  had  polluted 
his  daughter's  body  and  soul,  and  that  it  was  by  the  foul 
fiend  and  by  no  earthly  lover  that  she  had  conceived  and 
borne  the  creature  that  now  abode  with  him. 

Perhaps,  also,  as  was  but  natural,  he  sometimes  felt 
more  furious  against  this  offspring  of  hell  because  ever 
and  again  some  gleam  of  fantastic  inborn  honor,  some 
strange  savage  instinct  of  honesty,  would  awake  in  her 
and  oppose  him,  and  make  him  ashamed  of  those  small 
and  secret  sins  o^chicanery  wherein  his  soul  delighted, 
and  for  which  he  compounded  with  his  gods. 

He  had  left  her  mind  a  blank,  because  he  thought  the 
body  labored  hardest  when  the  brain  was  still  asleep, 
which  is  true ;  she  could  not  read ;  she  could  not  write ;  she 


120  FOLLE-FARINE. 

knew  absolutely  nothing.  Yet  there  was  a  soul  awake 
in  her  ;  yet  there  were  innumerable  thoughts  arid  dreams 
brooding  in  her  fathomless  eyes  ;  yet  there  was  a  desire 
in  her  fierce  and  unslacked  for  some  other  life  than  this  life 
of  the  packhorse  and  of  the  day  laborer  which  alone  she 
knew. 

He  had  done  his  best  to  degrade  and  to  brutalize  her, 
and  in  much  he  had  succeeded  ;  but  be  had  not  succeeded 
wholly.  There  was  a  liberty  in  her  that  escaped  his 
thraldom  ;  there  was  a  soul  in  her  that  resisted  the  dead- 
ening influence  of  her  existence. 

She  had  none  of  the  shame  of  her  sex ;  she  had  none 
of  the  timorous  instincts  of  womanhood.  She  had  a 
fierce  stubborn  courage,  and  she  was  insensible  of  the 
daily  outrages  of  her  life.  She  would  strip  bare  to  his 
word  obediently,  feeling  only  that  it  would  be  feeble  and 
worthless  to  dread  the  pain  of  the  lash.  She  would 
bathe  in  the  woodland  pool,  remembering  no  more  that 
she  might  be  watched  by  human  eyes  than*  does  the 
young  tigress  that  has  never  beheld  the  face  of  man. 

In  all  this  she  was  brutalized  and  degraded  by  her 
tyrant's  bondage :  in  other  things  she  was  far  higher 
than  he  and  escaped  him. 

Stupefied  as  her  mind  might  be  by  the  exhaustion  of 
severe  physical  labor,  it  had  still  irony  and  it  had  still 
imagination ;  and  under  the  hottest  heats  of  temptation 
there  were  two  things  which  by  sheer  instinct  she  resisted, 
and  resisted  so  that  neither  of  them  had  ever  been  forced 
on  her — they  were  falsehood  and  fear. 

"It  is  the  infamous  strength  of  the  devil !"  said  Clau- 
dis  Flamma,  when  he  found  that  he  could  not  force  her 
to  deviate  from  the  truth. 

The  world  says  the  same  of  those  who  will  not  feed  it 
with  lies. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  121 


CHAPTER  V. 

That  long  dry  summer  was  followed  by  an  autumn  of 
drought  and  scarcity. 

The  prayers  of  the  priests  and  peoples  failed  to  bring 
down  rain.  The  wooden  Christs  gazed  all  day  long  on 
parching  lands  and  panting  cattle.  Even  the  broad  deep 
rivers  shrank  and  left  their  banks  to  bake  and  stink  in 
the  long  drought.  The  orchards  sickened  for  lack  of 
moisture,  and  the  peasants  went  about  with  feverish  faces, 
ague-stricken  limbs,  and  trembling  hearts.  The  corn 
yielded  ill  in  the  hard  scorched  ground,  and  when  the 
winter  came  it  was  a  time  of  dire  scarcity  and  distress. 

Claudis  Flamma  and  a  few  others  like  him  alone  pros- 
pered. 

The  mill-house  at  Ypres  served  many  purposes.  It  was 
a  granary,  a  market,  a  baker's  shop,  an  usurer's  den,  all 
in  one. 

It  looked  a  simple  and  innocent  place.  In  the  summer- 
time it  was  peaceful  and  lovely,  green  and  dark  and  still, 
with  the  blue  sky  above  it,  and  the  songs  of  birds  all 
around ;  with  its  old  black  timbers,  its  many-colored 
orchards,  its  leafy  gardens,  its  gray  walls  washed  by  the 
hurrying  stream. 

But  in  the  winter  it  was  very  dreary,  utterly  lonely. 
The  water  roared,  and  the  leafless  trees  groaned  in  the 
wind,  and  the  great  leaden  clouds  of  rain  or  fog  envel- 
oped it  duskily. 

To  the  starving,  wet,  and  woe-begone  peasants  who 
would  go  to  it  with  aching  bones  and  aching  hearts,  it 
seemed  desolate  and  terrible ;  they  dreaded  with  a  great 
dread  the  sharp  voice  of  its  master — the  hardest  and  the 
shrewdest  and  the  closest-fisted  Norman  of  them  all. 

For  they  were  most  of  them  his  debtors,  and  so  were 
in  a  bitter  subjugation  to  him,  and  had  to  pay  those 
debts  as  best  they  might  with  their  labor  or  their  suffer- 
ing, with  the  best  of  all  their  wool,  or  oil,  or  fruit;  often 

11 


122  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

with  the  last  bit  of  silver  that  had  been  an  heirloom  for 
five  centuries,  or  with  the  last  bit  of  money  buried  away 
in  an  oYd  pitcher  under  their  apple-tree  to  be  the  nest-egg 
of  their  little  pet  daughter's  dowry. 

And  yet  Claudis  Flamma  was  respected  among  them ; 
for  he  could  outwit  them,  and  was  believed  to  be  very 
wealthy,  and  was  a  man  who  stood  well  with  the  good 
saints  and  with  holy  church, — a  wise  man,  in  a  word, 
with  whom  these  northern  folks  had  the  kinship  of 
mutual  industry  and  avarice. 

For  the  most  part  the  population  around  Ypres  was 
thrifty  and  thriving  in  a  cautious,  patient,  certain  way 
of  well-doing;  and  by  this  portion  of  it  the  silent  old 
miser  was  much  honored  as  a  man  laborious  and  penuri- 
ous, who  chose  to  live  on  a  leek  and  a  rye  loaf,  but  who 
must  have,  it  was  well  known,  put  by  large  gains  in  the 
thatch  of  his  roof  or  under  the  bricks  of  his  kitchen. 

By  the  smaller  section  of  it — poor,  unthrifty,  loose- 
handed  fools — who  belied  the  province  of  their  birth  so 
far  as  to  be  quick  to  spend  and  slow  to  save,  and  who  so 
fell  into  want  and  famine  and  had  to  borrow  of  others 
their  children's  bread,  the  old  miller  was  hated  with  a 
hate  deeper  and  stronger  because  forced  to  be  mute,  and 
to  submit,  to  cringe,  and  to  be  trod  upon,  in  the  miserable 
servitude  of  the  hopeless  debtor. 

In  the  hard  winter  which  followed  on  that  sickly 
autumn,  these  and  their  like  fell  further  in  the  mire  of 
poverty  than  ever,  and  had  to  come  and  beg  of  Flamma 
loans  of  the  commonest  necessaries  of  their  bare  living. 
They  knew  that  they  would  have  to  pay  a  hundredfold 
in  horrible  extortion  when  the  spring  and  summer 
should  bring  them  work,  and  give  them  fruit  on  their 
trees  and  crops  on  their  little  fields ;  but  they  could  do 
no  better. 

It  had  been  for  many  years  the  custom  to  go  to  Flamma 
in  such  need  ;  and  being  never  quit  of  his  hold  his  debt- 
ors never  could  try  for  aid  elsewhere. 

The  weather  towards  the  season  of  Noel  became  fright- 
fully severe  ;  the  mill  stream  never  stopped,  but  all  around 
it  was  frozen,  and  the  swamped  pastures  were  sheets  of 
ice.     The  birds  died  by  thousands  in  the  open  country, 


FOL  LE-FA  RINE.  123 

and  several  of  the  sheep  perished  in  snowstorms  on  the 
higher  lands. 

There  was  dire  want  in  many  of  the  hovels  and  home- 
steads, and  the  bare  harvests  of  a  district  usually  so  opu- 
lent in  all  riches  of  the  soil  brought  trouble  and  dearth  in 
their  train.  Sickness  prevailed  because  the  old  people 
and  the  children  in  their  hunger  ate  berries  and  roots 
unfit  for  human  food ;  the  waters  swelled,  the  ice  melted, 
many  homes  were  flooded,  and  some  even  swept  away. 

Old  Pitchou  and  Claudis  Flamma  alone  were  content; 
the  mill  wheel  never  stopped  work,  and  famine  prices 
could  be  asked  in  this  extremity. 

Folle-Farine  worked  all  that  winter,  day  after  day, 
month  after  month,  with  scarcely  a  word  being  spoken 
to  her,  or  scarcely  an  hour  being  left  her  that  she  could 
claim  as  her  own. 

She  looked  against  the  snow  as  strangely  as  a  scarlet 
rose  blossoming  in  frost  there  could  have  done ;  but  the 
people  that  came  to  and  fro,  even  the  young  men  among 
them,  were  too  used  to  that  dark  vivid  silent  face  of  hers, 
and  those  lithe  brown  limbs  that  had  the  supple  play 
and  the  golden  glow  of  the  East  in  them,  to  notice  them 
as  any  loveliness:  and  if  they  did  note  them  on  some  rare 
time,  thought  of  them  only  as  the  marks  of  a  vagrant  and 
accursed  race. 

She  was  so  unlike  to  themselves  that  the  northern 
peasantry  never  dreamed  of  seeing  beauty  in  her  ;  they 
turned  their  heads  away  when  she  went  by,  striding 
after  her  mule  or  bearing  her  pitcher  from  the  well  with 
the  free  and  vigorous  grace  of  a  mountain  or  desert-born 
creature. 

The  sheepskin  girt  about  her  loins,  the  red  kerchief 
knotted  to  her  head,  the  loose  lithe  movements  of  her 
beautiful  limbs,  the  fire  and  dreams  in  her  musing  eyes — 
all  these  were  so  unlike  themselves  that  they  saw  nothing 
in  them  except  what  was  awful  or  unlovely. 

Half  the  winter  went  by  without  a  kind  word  to  her 
from  any  one  except  such  as  in  that  time  of  suffering  and 
scarcity  Marcellin  spoke  to  her.  So  had  every  winter 
gone  since  she  had  come  there — a  time  so  long  ago  that 
the  memory  of  Phratos  had  become  so  dim  to  her  that 


124  FOLLE-FARINE. 

she  often  doubted  if  he  also  were  not  a  mere  shadow  of  a 
dream  like  all  the  rest. 

Half  the  winter  she  fared  hardly  and  ate  sparingly, 
and  did  the  work  of  the  mule  and  the  bullocks — indif- 
ferent and  knowing  no  better,  and  only  staring  at  the 
stars  when  they  throbbed  in  the  black  skies  on  a  frosty 
night,  and  wondering  if  she  would  ever  go  to  them,  or  if 
they  would  ever  come  to  her — those  splendid  and  familiar 
unknown  things  that  looked  on  all  the  misery  of  the  earth, 
and  snone  on  tranquilly  and  did  not  seem  to  care. 

Time  came  close  on  to  the  new  year,  and  the  distress 
and  the  cold  were  together  at  their  height.  The  weather 
was  terrible  ;  and  the  poor  suffered  immeasurably. 

A  score  of  times  a-day  she  heard  them  ask  bread  at  the 
mill,  and  a  score  of  times  saw  them  given  a  stone ;  she 
saw  them  come  in  the  raw  fog,  pinched  and  shivering,  and 
sick  with  ague,  and  she  saw  her  grandsire  deny  them 
with  a  grating  sarcasm  or  two,  or  take  from  them  fifty 
times  its  value  for  some  niggard  grant  of  food. 

"  Why  should  I  think  of  it,  why  should  I  care  ?"  she 
said  to  herself;  and  yet  she  did  both,  and  could  not  help  it. 

There  was  among  the  sufferers  one  old  and  poor,  who 
lived  not  far  from  the  mill,  by  name  Manon  Dax. 

She  was  a  little  old  hardy  brown  woman,  shriveled 
and  bent,  yet  strong,  with  bright  eyes  like  a  robin's,  and 
a  tough  frame,  eighty  years  old. 

She  had  been  southern  born,  and  the  wife  of  a  stone-cut- 
ter ;  he  had  been  dead  fifty  years,  and  she  had  seen  all  her 
sons  and  daughters  and  their  offspring  die  too  ;  and  had 
now  left  on  her  hand  to  rear  four  young  great-grandchil- 
dren, almost  infants,  who  were  always  crying  to  her  for 
food  as  new-born  birds  cry  in  their  nests. 

She  washed  a  little  when  she  could  get  any  linen  to 
wash,  and  she  span,  and  she  picked  up  the  acorns  and  the 
nuts,  and  she  tilled  a  small  plot  of  ground  that  belonged 
to  her  hut,  and  she  grew  cabbages  and  potatoes  and  herbs 
on  it,  and  so  kept  a  roof  over  her  head,  and  fed  her  four 
nestlings,  and  trotted  to  and  fro  in  her  wooden  shoes  all 
day  long,  and  worked  in  hail  and  rain,  in  drought  and 
tempest,  and  never  complained,  but  said  that  God  was 
good  to  her. 


FOLL  E-FA  RINE.  \  25 

She  was  anxious  about  the  children,  knowing  she  could 
not  live  long — that  was  all.  Bat  then  she  felt  sure  that 
the  Mother  of  God  would  take  care  of  them,  and  so  was 
cheerful ;  and  did  what  the  day  brought  her  to  do,  and 
was  content. 

Now  on  Manon  Dax,  as  on  thousands  of  others,  the 
unusual  severity  of  the  winter  fell  like  a  knife.  She  was 
only  one  among  thousands. 

Nobody  noticed  her ;  still  it  was  hard. 

All  the  springs  near  her  dwelling  were  frozen  for  many 
weeks ;  there  was  no  well  nearer  than  half  a  league,  and 
half  a  league  out  and  half  a  league  back  every  day  over 
ground  sharp  and  slippery  with  ice,  with  two  heavy  pails 
to  carry,  is  not  a  little  when  one  is  over  eighty,  and  has 
only  a  wisp  of  woolen  serge  between  the  wind  and  one's 
withered  limbs. 

The  acorns  and  horse-chestnuts  had  all  been  disputed 
with  her  fiercely  by  boys  rough  and  swift,  who  foresaw  a 
hard  time  coming  in  which  their  pigs  would  be  ill  fed. 
The  roots  in  her  little  garden-plot  were  all  black  and 
killed  by  the  cold.  The  nettles  had  been  all  gathered 
and  stewed  and  eaten. 

The  snow  drove  in  through  a  big  hole  in  her  roof.  The 
woods  were  ransacked  for  every  bramble  and  broken 
bough  by  rievers  younger  and  more  agile  than  herself; 
she  had  nothing  to  eat,  nothing  to  burn. 

The  children  lay  in  their  little  beds  of  hay  and  cried  all 
day  long  for  food,  and  she  had  none  to  give  them. 

"  If  it  were  only  myself!"  she  thought,  stopping  her 
ears  not  to  hear  them  ;  if  it  had  been  only  herself  it  would 
have  been  so  easy  to  creep  away  into  the  corner  among 
the  dry  grass,  and  to  lie  still  till  the  cold  froze  the  paius 
of  hunger  and  made  them  quiet ;  and  to  .feel  numb  and 
tired,  and  yet  glad  that  it  was  all  over,  and  to  murmur 
that  God  was  good,  and  so  to  let  death  come — content. 

But  it  was  not  only  herself. 

The  poor  are  seldom  so  fortunate — they  themselves 
would  say  so  unhappy — as  to  be  alone  in  their  homes. 

There  were  the  four  small  lives  left  to  her  by  the  poor 
dead  foolish  things  she  had  loved, — small  lives  that  had 
been  rosy  even  on  so  much  hunger,  and  blithe  even  amidst 

11* 


126  FOLLE-FARINE. 

so  much  cold ;  that  had  been  mirthful  even  at  the  flood- 
ing of  the  snowdrift,  and  happy  even  over  a  meal  of 
mouldy  crusts,  or  of  hips  and  haws  from  the  hedges. 
Had  been — until  now,  when  even  so  much  as  this  could 
not  be  got,  and  when  their  beds  of  hay  were  soaked 
through  with  snow- water ;  now — when  they  were  quite 
silent,  except  when  they  sobbed  out  a  cry  for  bread. 

"I  am  eighty-two  years  old,  and  I  have  never  since  I 
was  born  asked  man  or  woman  for  help,  or  owed  man  or 
woman  a  copper  coin,"  she  thought,  sitting  by  her  black 
hearth,  across  which  the  howling  wind  drove,  and  stop- 
ping her  ears  to  shut  out  the  children's  cries. 

She  had  often  known  severe  winters,  scanty  food,  bitter 
living, — she  had  scores  of  times  in  her  long  years  been  as 
famished  as  this,  and  as  cold,  and  her  house  had  been  as 
desolate.  Yet  she  had  borne  it  all  and  never  asked  for 
an  alms,  being  strong  and  ignorant,  and  being  also  in 
fear  of  the  world,  and  holding  a  debt  a  great  shame. 

But  now  she  knew  that  she  must  do  it,  or  let  those 
children  perish  ;  being  herself  o^d  and  past  work,  and 
having  seen  all  her  sons  die  out  in  their  strength  before 
her. 

The  struggle  was  long  and  hard  with  her.  She  would 
have  to  die  soon,  she  knew,  and  she  had  striven  all  her 
lifetime  so  to  live  that  she  might  die  saying,  "  I  have 
asked  nothing  of  any  man." 

This  perhaps,  she  thought  sadly,  had  been  only  a  pride 
after  all ;  a  feeling  foolish  and  wicked,  that  the  good  God 
sought  now  to  chasten.  Any  way  she  knew  that  she 
must  yield  it  up  and  go  and  ask  for  something;  or  else 
those  four  small  things,  who  were  like  a  cluster  of  red 
berries  on  a  leafless  tree,  must  suffer  and  must  perish. 

"  It  is  bitter,  but  I  must  do  it,"  she  thought.  "  Sure 
it  is  strange  that  the  good  God  cares  to  take  any  of  us  to 
himself  through  so  sharp  a  way  as  hunger.  It  seems,  if 
I  saw  His  face  now,  I  should  say,  '  Not  heaven  for  me, 
Monseigneur:  only  bread  and  a  little  wood.'" 

And  she  rose  up  on  her  bent  stiff  limbs,  and  went  to 
the  pile  of  hay  on  which  the  children  were  lying,  pale 
and  thin,  but  trying  to  smile,  all  of  them,  because  they 
saw  the  tears  on  her  cheeks. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  127 

"  Be  still,  my  treasures,"  she  said  to  them,  striving  to 
speak  cheerily,  aud  laying  her  hands  on  the  curls  of  the 
eldest  born;  "I  go  away  for  a  little  while  to  try  and  get 
you  food.  Be  good,  Bernardou,  and  take  care  of  them 
till  I  come  back." 

Bernardou  promised,  being  four  years  old  himself;  and 
she  crept  out  of  the  little  black  door  of  the  hut  on  to  the 
white  road  and  into  the  rushing  winds. 

"  I  will  go  to  Flamma,"  she  said  to  herself.- 

It  was  three  in  the  afternoon,  nearly  dark  at  this  sea- 
son of  midwinter. 

The  business  of  the  day  was  done.  The  people  had 
come  and  gone,  favored  or  denied,  according  to  such 
sureties  as  they  could  offer.  The  great  wheel  worked  on 
in  the  seething  water ;  the  master  of  the  mill  sat  against 
the  casement  to  catch  the  falling  light,  adding  up  the 
sums  in  his  ledger — crooked  little  signs  such  as  he  had 
taught  himself  to  understand,  though  he  could  form 
neither  numerals  nor  letters  with  his  pen. 

All  around  him  in  the  storehouses  there  were  corn, 
wood,  wool,  stores  of  every  sort  of  food.  All  around 
him,  in  the  room  he  lived  in,  there  were  hung  the  salt 
meats,  the  sweet  herbs,  and  the  dried  fruits,  that  he  had 
saved  from  the  profusion  of  other  and  healthier  years. 
It  pleased  him  to  know  that  he  held  all  that,  and  also 
withheld  it.  It  moved  him  with  a  certain  saturnine  glee 
to  see  the  hungry  wistful  eyes  of  the  peasants  stare  long- 
ingly at  all  those  riches,  whilst  their  white  lips  faltered 
out  an  entreaty — which  he  denied. 

It  was  what  he  liked  ;  to  sit  there  and  count  his  gains 
after  his  fashion,  and  look  at  his  stores  and  listen  to  the 
howling  wind  and  driving  hail,  and  chuckle  to  think  how 
lean  and  cold  and  sick  they  were  outside — those  fools 
who  mocked  him  because  his  saint  had  been  a  gypsy's 
leman. 

To  be  prayed  to  for  bread,  and  give  the  stone  of  a 
bitter  denial ;  to  be  implored  with  tears  of  supplication, 
and  answer  with  a  grim  jest ;  to  see  a  woman  come  with 
children  dying  for  food,  and  to  point  out  to  her  the  big 
brass  pans  full  of  milk,  and  say  to  her  "  All  that  makes 
butter  for  Paris,"  and  then  see  her  go  away  wailing  and 


128  FOLLE-FARINE. 

moaning  that  her  child  would  die,  and  tottering  feebly 
through  the  snow — all  this  was  sweet  to  him. 

Before  his  daughter  had  gone  from  him,  he  had  been, 
though  a  hard  man,  yet  honest,  and  had  been,  though 
severe,  not  cruel ;  but  since  he  had  been  aware  of  the 
shame  of  the  creature  whom  he  had  believed  in  as  an 
angel,  every  fiber  in  him  had  been  embittered  and  salted 
sharp  with  the  poignancy  of  an  acrid  hate  towards  all 
living  things.  To  hurt  aud  to  wound,  and  to  see  what 
he  thus  struck  bleed  and  suffer,  was  the  only  pleasure 
life  had  left  for  him.  He  had  all  his  manhood  walked 
justly,  according  to  his  light,  and  trusted  in  the  God  to 
whom  he  prayed ;  and  his  God  and  his  child  had  denied 
and  betrayed  him,  and  his  heart  had  turned  to  gall. 

The  old  woman  toiled  slowly  through  the  roads  which 
lay  between  her  hut  and  the  water-mill. 

They  were  roads  which  passed  through  meadows  and 
along  cornfields,  beside  streamlets,  and  among  little  belts 
of  woodland,  lanes  and  paths  green  and  pleasant  in  the 
summer,  but  now  a  slough  of  frozen  mud,  and  whistled 
through  by  northeast  winds.  She  held  on  her  way 
steadily,  stumbling  often,  and  often  slipping  and  going 
slowly,  for  she  was  very  feeble  from  long  lack  of  food, 
and  the  intensity  of  the  cold  drove  through  and  through 
her  frame.  Still  she  held  on  bravely,  in  the  teeth  of 
the  rough  winds  and  of  the  coming  darkness,  though  the 
weather  was  so  wild  that  the  poplar-trees  were  bent  to 
the  earth,  and  the  little  light  in  the  Calvary  lamp  by  the 
river  blew  to  and  fro,  and  at  last  died  out.  Still  she  held 
on,  a  little  dark,  tottering  figure,  with  a  prayer  on  her 
lips  and  a  hope  in  her  heart. 

The  snow  was  falling,  the  clouds  were  driving,  the 
waters  were  roaring,  in  the  twilight :  she  was  only  a 
little  black  speck  in  the  vast  gray  waste  of  the  earth  and 
the  sky,  and  the  furious  air  tossed  her  at  times  to  and 
fro  like  a  withered  leaf.  But  she  would  not  let  it  beat 
her  ;  she  groped  her  way  with  infinite  difficulty,  grasping 
a  bough  for  strength,  or  waiting  under  a  tree  for  breath 
a  moment,  and  thus  at  last  reached  the  mill-house. 

Such  light  as  there  was  left  showed  her  the  kitchen 
within,  the  stores  of  wood,  the  strings  of  food ;  it  looked 


FOLLE-FARINE.  129 

to  her  as  it  had  looked  to  Phratos,  a  place  of  comfort  and 
of  plenty;  a  strong  safe  shelter  from  the  inclement  night. 

She  lifted  the  latch  and  crept  in,  and  went  straight  to 
Claudis  Flamma,  who  was  still  busy  beneath  the  window 
with  those  rude  signs  which  represented  to  him  his 
earthly  wealth. 

She  stood  before  him  white  from  the  falling  snow, 
with  her  brown  face  working  with  a  strong  emotion,  her 
eyes  clear  and  honest,  and  full  of  an  intense  anxiety  of 
appeal. 

"  Flamma,"  she  said  simply  to  him,  "  we  have  been 
neighbors  fifty  years  and  more — thou  and  I,  and  many 
have  borrowed  of  thee  to  their  hurt  and  shame,  but  I 
never.  I  am  eighty-two,  and  I  never  in  my  days  asked 
anything  of  man  or  woman  or  child.  .  But  I  come  to- 
night to  ask  bread  of  you, — bread  for  the  four  little 
children  at  home.  I  have  heard  them  cry  three  days, 
and  have  had  nothing  to  give  them  save  a  berry  or  two 
off  the  trees.  I  cannot  bear  it  any  more.  So  I  have 
come  to  you  ." 

He  shut  his  ledger,  and  looked  at  her.  They  had  been 
neighbors,  as  she  had  said,  half  a  century  and  more ; 
and  had  often  knelt  down  before  the  same  altar,  side  by 
side. 

11  What  dost  want?"  he  asked  simply. 

"Food,"  she  made  answer;  "food  and  fuel.  They 
are  so  cold — the  little  ones." 

"  What  canst  pay  for  them  ?"  he  asked. 

"  Nothing — nothing  now.  There  is  not  a  thing  in  the 
house  except  the  last  hay  the  children  sleep  on.  But 
if  thou  wilt  let  me  have  a  little — -just  a  little — while  the 
weather  is  so  hard,  I  will  find  means  to  pay  when  the 
weather  breaks.  There  is  my  garden ;  and  I  can  wash 
and  spin.  I  will  pay  faithfully.  Thou  knowest  I  never 
owed  a  brass  coin  to  any  man.  But  I  am  so  old,  and 
the  children  so  young " 

Claudis  Flamma  got  up  and  walked  to  the  other  side 
of  the  kitchen. 

Her  eyes  followed  him  with  wistful,  hungry  longing. 
Where  he  went  there  stood  pans  of  new  milk,  baskets  of 
eggs,   rolls  of  bread,   piles  of  fagots.     Her  feeble  heart 


130  FOLLE-FARWE. 

beat  thickly  with  eager  hope,  her  dim  eyes  glowed  with 
pleasure  and  with  thankfulness 

He  came  back  and  brought  to  her  a  few  sharp  rods, 
plucked  from  a  thorn-tree. 

"  Give  these  to  thy  children's  children,"  he  said,  with 
a  dark  smile.  "  For  these — and  for  no  more — will  they 
recompense  thee  when  they  shall  grow  to  maturity." 

She  looked  at  him  startled  and  disquieted,  yet  think- 
ing that  he  meant  but  a  stern  jest. 

"  Good  Flamma,  you  mock  me,"  she  murmured,  trem- 
bling; "the  babies  are  little,  and  good.  Ah,  give  me 
food  quickly,  for  God's  sake  !  A  jest  is  well  in  season, 
but  to  an  empty  body  and  a  bitter  heart  it  is  like  a 
stripe." 

He  smiled,  and  answered  her  in  his  harsh  grating 
voice, — 

"  I  give  thee  the  only  thing  given  without  payment  in 
this  world — advice.     Take  it  or  leave  it." 

She  reeled  a  little  as  if  he  had  struck  her  a  blow  with 
his  fist,  and  her  face  changed  terribly,  whilst  her  eyes 
stared  without  light  or  sense  in  them, 

11  You  jest,  Flamma!  You  only  jest!"  she  muttered. 
"The 'little  children  starve,  I  tell  you.  You  will  give 
me  bread  for  them  ?  Just  a  little  bread  ?  I  will  pay  as 
soon  as  the  weather  breaks." 

"  I  can  give  nothing.  I  am  poor,  very  poor,"  be 
answered  her,  with  the  habitual  lie  of  the  miser;  and  he 
opened  his  ledger  again,  and  went  on  counting  up  the 
dots  and  crosses  by  which  he  kept  his  books. 

His  servant  Pitchou  sat  spinning  by  the  hearth :  she 
did  not  cease  her  work,  nor  intercede  by  a  word.  The 
poor  can  be  better  to  the  poor  than  any  princes  ;  but  the 
poor  can  also  be  more  cruel  to  the  poor  than  any  slave- 
drivers. 

The  old  woman's  head  dropped  on  her  breast,  she 
turned  feebly,  and  felt  her  way,  as  though  she  were 
blind,  out  of  the  house  and  into  the  air.  It  was  already 
dark  with  the  darkness  of  the  descending  night. 

The  snow  was  falling  fast.  Her  hope  was  gone ;  all 
was  cold — cold  as  death. 

She  shivered  and  gasped,  and  strove  to  totter  on :  the 


FOLLE-FARINE.  131 

children  were  alone.  The  winds  blew  and  drove  the 
suowflakes  in  a  white  cloud  against  her  face  ;  the  bend- 
ing trees  creaked  and  groaned  as  though  in  pain  ;  the 
roar  of  the  mill-water  filled  the  air. 

There  was  now  no  light :  the  day  was  gone,  and  the 
moon  was  hidden ;  beneath  her  feet  the  frozen  earth 
cracked  and  slipped  and  gave  way.  She  fell  down ; 
being  so  old  and  so  weakly  she  could  not  rise  again,  but 
lay  still  with  one  limb  broken  under  her,  and  the  winds 
and  the  snowstorm  beating  together  upon  her. 

"  The  children  !  the  children  !"  she  moaned  feebly,  and 
then  was  still;  she  was  so  cold,  and  the  snow  fell  so 
fast ;  she  could  not  lift  herself  nor  see  what  was  around 
her ;  she  thought  that  she  was  in  her  bed  at  home,  and 
felt  as  though  she  would  soon  sleep. 

Through  the  dense  gloom  around  her  there  came  a 
swiftly-moving  shape,  that  flew  as  silently  and  as  quickly 
as  a  night-bird,  and  paused  as  though  on  wings  beside 
her. 

A  voice  that  was  at  once  timid  and  fierce,  tender  and 
savage,  spoke  to  her  through  the  clouds  of  driven  snow- 
spray. 

"  Hush,  it  is  1 1  I — Folle-Farine.  I  have  brought  you 
my  food.  It  is  not  much — they  never  give  me  much. 
Still  it  will  help  a  little.  I  heard  what  you  said — I 
was  in  the  loft.  Flamma  must  not  know ;  he  might 
make  you  pay.     But  it  is  all  mine,  truly  mine ;  take  it." 

"  Food — for  the  children  !" 

The  blessed  word  aroused  her  from  her  lethargy ;  she 
raised  herself  a  little  on  one  arm,  and  tried  to  see  whence 
the  voice  came  that  spoke  to  her. 

But  the  effort  exhausted  her ;  she  fell  again  to  the 
ground  with  a  groan — her  limb  was  broken. 

Folle-Farine  stood  above  her ;  her  dark  eyes  gleaming 
like  a  hawk's  through  the  gloom,  and  full  of  a  curious, 
startled  pity. 

"  You  cannot  get  up ;  you  are  old,"  she  said  abruptly. 
"  See — let  me  carry  you  home.  The  children  !  yes,  the 
children  can  have  it.     It  is  not  much  ;  but  it  will  serve." 

She  spoke  hastily  and  roughly ;  she  was  ashamed  of 
her  own  compassion.     What  was  it  to  her  whether  any  of 


132  FOLLE-FARINE. 

these  people  lived  or  died  ?  They  had  always  mocked 
and  hated  her. 

"  If  I  did  right,  I  should  let  them  rot,  and  spit  on  their 
corpses,"  she  thought,  with  the  ferocity  of  vengeance 
that  ran  in  her  Oriental  blood. 

Yet  she  had  come  out  in  the  storm,  and  had  brought 
away  her  food  for  strangers,  though  she  had  been  at 
work  all  day  long,  and  was  chilled  to  the  bone,  and  was 
devoured  with  ravenous  hunger. 

Why  did  she  do  it? 

She'did  not  know.  She  scorned  herself.  But  she  was 
sorry  for  this  woman,  so  poor  and  so  brave,  with  her 
eighty-two  years,  and  so  bitterly  denied  in  her  extremity. 

Mauon  Dax  dimly  caught  the  muttered  words,  and 
feebly  strove  to  answer  them,  whilst  the  winds  roared 
and  the  snow  beat  upon  her  fallen  body. 

u  I  cannot  rise,"  she  murmured  ;  "  my  leg  is  broken,  I 
think.  But  it  is  no  matter.  Go  you  to  the  little  ones  ; 
whoever  you  are,  you  are  good,  and  have  pity.  Go  to 
them,  go.  It  is  no  matter  for  me.  I  have  lived  my  life 
■ — anyway.  It  will  soon  be  over.  I  am  not  in  pain — 
indeed." 

Folle-Farine  stood  in  silence  a  minute,  then  she  stooped 
and  lifted  the  old  creature  in  her  strong  young  arms,  and 
with  that  heavy  burden  set  out  on  her  way  in  the  teeth 
of  the  storm. 

She  had  long  known  the  woman,  and  the  grandchildren, 
by  sight  and  name, 

Once  or  twice  when  she  had  passed  by  them,  the 
grandam,  tender  of  heart,  but  narrow  of  brain,  and  be- 
lieving all  the  tales  of  her  neigbors,  had  drawn  the  little 
ones  closer  to  her,  under  the  wing  of  her  serge  cloak,  lest 
the  evil  eye  that  had  bewitched  the  tanner's  youngest 
born,  should  fall  on  them,  and  harm  them  in  like  manner. 

Nevertheless  the  evil  eyes  gleamed  on  her  with  a  wist- 
ful sorrow,  as  Folle-Farine  bore  her  with  easy  strength 
and  a  sure  step,  through  the  frozen  woodland  ways,  as 
she  would  have  borne  the  load  of  wood,  or  the  sacks  or 
corn,  that  she  was  so  well  used  to  carry  to  and  fro  like  a 
packhorse. 

Manon  Dax  did  not  stir  nor  struggle,  she  did  not  even 


FOLLE-FARINE.  133 

strive  to  speak  again ;  she  was  vaguely  sensible  of  a  slow, 
buoyant,  painless  movement,  of  a  close,  soft  pressure  that 
sheltered  her  from  the  force  of  the  winds,  of  a  subtle 
warmth  that  stole  through  her  emaciated  aching  frame, 
and  made  her  drowsy  and  forgetful,  and  content  to  be 
still. 

She  could  do  no  more.  Her  day  for  struggle  and  for 
work  was  done. 

Once  she  moved  a  little.  Her  bearer  paused  and 
stopped  and  listened. 

"  Did  you  speak  F"  she  whispered. 

Manon  Dax  gave  a  soft  troubled  sigh. 

"  God  is  good,"  she  muttered,  like  one  speaking  in  a 
dream. 

Folle-Farine  held  on  her  way;  fiercely  blown,  blinded- 
by  the  snow,  pierced  by  the  blasts  of  the  hurricane,  but 
sure  of  foot  on  the  ice  as  a  reindeer,  and  sure  of  eye  in 
the  dark  as  a  night-hawk. 

"  Are  you  in  pain?"  she^asked  once  of  the  burden  she 
carried. 

There  was  no  answer.     Old  Manon  seemed  to  sleep. 

The  distance  of  the  road  was  nothing  to  her,  fleet  and 
firm  of  step,  and  inured  to  all  hardships  of  the  weather; 
yet  short  as  it  was,  it  cost  her  an  hour  to  travel  it, 
heavily  weighted  as  she  was,  soaked  with  snow-water, 
blown  back  continually  by  the  opposing  winds,  and 
forced  to  stagger  and  to  pause  by  the  fury  of  the 
storm. 

At  last  she  reached  the  hut. 

The  wind  had  driven  open  the  door.  The  wailing  cries 
of  the  children  echoed  sorrowfully  on  the  stillness,  an- 
swered by  the  bleating  of  sheep,  cold  and  hungry  in  their 
distant  folds.  The  snow  had  drifted  in  unchecked ;  all 
was  quite  dark. 

She  felt  her  way  within,  and  being  used  by  long  custom 
to  see  in  the  gloom,  as  the  night-haunting  beasts  and 
birds  can  see,  she  found  the  bed  of  hay,  and  laid  her 
burden  gently  down  on  it. 

The  children  ceased  their  wailing,  and  the  two  eldest 
ones  crept  up  close  to  their  grandmother,  and  pressed 
their  cheeks  to  hers,  and  whispered  to  her  eagerly,  with 

12 


134  FOLLE-FARINE. 

their  little  famished  lips,  "  Where  is  the  food,  where  is 
the  food  ?» 

But  there  was  still  no  answer. 

The  clouds  drifted  a  little  from  the  moon  that  had 
been  so  long  obscured ;  it  shone  for  a  moment  through 
the  vapor  of  the  heavy  sky;  the  whitened  ground  threw 
back  the  rays  increased  tenfold  ;  the  pale  gleam  reached 
the  old  still  face  of  Manon  Dax. 

There  was  a  feeble  smile  upon  it — the  smile  with 
which  her  last  words  had  been  spoken  in  the  darkness  j 
"  God  is  good!"  t 

She  was  quite  dead. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


All  that  night  Folle-Farine  tarried  with  the  children. 

The  youngest  had  been  suffocated  whilst  they  had  been 
alone,  byThe  snow  which  had  fallen  through  the  roof,  and 
from  which  its  elders  had  been  too  small  and  weakly  to 
be  able  to  drag  it  out,  unaided. 

She  laid  it,  stiff  already  in  the  cold  of  the  night,  beside 
the  body  of  its  old  grandam,  who  had  perished  in  en- 
deavoring to  save  it ;  they  lay  together,  the  year-old  child 
and  the  aged  woman,  the  broken  bud  and  the  leafless 
bough.  They  had  died  of  hunger,  as  the  birds  die  on  the 
moors  and  plains ;  it  is  a  common  fate. 

She  stayed  beside  the  children,  w7ho  were  frightened 
and  bewildered  and  quite  mute.  She  divided  such  food 
as  she  had  brought  between  them,  not  taking  any  herself. 
She  took  off  the  sheepskin  which  she  wore  in  winter,  tied 
round  h§r  loins  as  her  outdoor  garment,  and  made  a  little 
nest  of  it  for  the  three,  and  covered  them  with  it.  She 
could  not  close  the  door,  from  the  height  of  the  drifted 
snow,  and  the  wind  poured  in  all  night  long,  though  in 
an  hour  the  snow  ceased  to  fall.  Now  and  then  the  clouds 
parting  a  little,  let  a  ray  of  the  moon  stray  in  ;  and  then 
she  could  see  the  quiet  faces  of  the  old  dead  woman  and 
the  child. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  135 

"  They  die  of  famine — and  they  die  saying  their  '  God 
is  good,' "  she  thought  and  she  pondered  on  it  deeply, 
and  with  the  bitter  and  melancholy  irony  which  life  had 
already  taught  her,  while  the  hours  of  the  night  dragged 
slowly  on ;  the  winds  howled  above  the  trembling  hovel, 
and  the  children  sobbed  themselves  to  sleep  at  last,  lulled 
by  the  warmth  of  the  skin,  into  which  they  crept  to- 
gether like  young  birds  in  a  nest. 

She  sat  there  patiently  ;  frozen  and  ravenous ;  yet  not 
drawing  a  corner  of  the  sheepskin  to  her  own  use,  nor 
regretting  a  crumb  of  the  bread  she  'had  surrendered. 
She  hated  the  human  race,  whose  hand  was  always 
against  her.  She  had  no  single  good  deed  to  thank  them 
for,  nor  any  single  gentle  word.  Yet  she  was  sorry  for 
that  old  creature,  who  had  been  so  bitterly  dealt  with  all 
her  years  through,  and  who  had  died  saying  "  God  is 
good."  She  was  sorry  for  those  little  helpless,  uncon- 
scious starving  animals,  who  had  lost  the  only  life  that 
could  labor  for  them. 

She  forgave — because  she  forgot — that  in  other  winters 
this  door  had  been  shut  against  her,  as  against  an  ac- 
cursed thing,  and  these  babes  had  mocked  her  in  their 
first  imperfect  speech. 

The  dawn  broke ;  the  sharp  gray  winter's  day  came  ; 
the  storm  had  lulled,  but  the  whole  earth  was  frost-bound 
and  white  with  snow,  and  the  air  was  piercing,  and  the 
sky  dark  and  overcast. 

She  had  to  leave  them  ;  she  was  bound  to  her  daily 
labor  at  the  mill,  she  knew  that  if  when  the  sun  rose  she 
should  be  found  absent,  she  and  they  too  would  surely 
suffer.  What  to  do  for  them  she  could  not  tell.  She  had 
no  friend  save  Marcellin,  who  himself  was  as  poor  as 
these.  She  never  spoke  to  any  living  thing,  except  a 
sheep-dog,  or  a  calf  bleating  for  its  mother,  or  a  toil-worn 
bullock  staggering  over  the  plowed  clods. 

Between  her  and  all  those  around  her  there  were  per- 
petual enmity  and  mistrust,  and  scarcely  so  much  of  a 
common  bond  as  lies  in  a  common  humanity.  For  in  her 
title  to  a  common  humanity  with  them  they  disbelieved; 
while  she  in  her  scorn  rejected  claim  to  it. 

At  daybreak  there  passed  by  the  open  door  in  the  mist 


136  FOLLE-FARINE. 

a  peasant  going  to  his  cattle  in  the  fields  beyond,  push- 
ing through  the  snow  a  rude  hand-cart  full  of  turnips, 
and  other  winter  food. 

She  rose  and  called  to  him. 

He  stared  and  stood  still. 

She  went  to  the  doorway  and  signed  to  him. 

"  Old  Manon  Dax  is  dead.  Will  you  tell  the  people  ? 
The  children  are  here,  alone,  and  they  starve." 

"  Manon  Dax  dead  ?  "  he  echoed  stupidly :  he  was  her 
nearest  neighbor;  he  had  helped  her  fetch  her  washing- 
water  sometimes  from  the  well  half  a  league  away  ;  when 
his  wife  had  been  down  with  fever  and  ague,  .the  old 
woman  had  nursed  her  carefully  and  well  through  many 
a  tedious  month. 

"  Yes,  I  found  her  on  the  road,  in  the  snow,  last  night. 
She  had  broken  her  leg,  and  she  was  dead  before  I  got 
here.  Go  and  send  some  one.  The  little  children  are 
all  alone,  and  one  of  them  is  dead  too." 

It  was  so  dark  still,  that  he  had  not  seen  at  first  who 
it  was  that  addressed  him  ;  but  slowly,  as  he  stared  and 
stared,  and  drew  nearer  to  her,  he  recognized  the  scarlet 
girdle,  the  brown  limbs,  the  straight  brow,  the  fathomless 
eyes.  And  he  feared  her,  with  a  great  fear  rising  there 
suddenly,  before  him,  out  of  that  still  white  world  of  dawn 
and  shadow. 

He  dropped  the  handles  of  his  cart  and  fled  ;  a  turn  in 
the  road,  and  the  darkness  of  the  morning,  soon  hid  him 
from  sight.  She  thought  that  he  had  gone  to  summon 
his  people,  and  she  went  back  and  sat  again  by  the  sleep- 
ing children,  and  watched  the  sad  still  faces  of  the  dead. 

The  peasant  flew  home  as  swiftly  as  his  heavy  shoes 
and  the  broken  ice  of  the  roads  would  allow. 

His  cabin  was  at  some  distance,  at  a  place  where, 
amidst  the  fields,  a  few  huts,  a  stone  crucifix,  some  barns 
and  stacks,  and  a  single  wineshop  made  up  a  little  village, 
celebrated  in  the  district  for  its  wide-spreading  orchards 
and  their  excellence  of  fruits. 

Even  so  early  the  little  hamlet  was  awake  ;  the  shutters 
were  opened ;  the  people  were  astir ;  men  were  brushing 
the  snow  from  their  thresholds ;  women  wTere  going  out 
to  their  field-work  ;  behind  the  narrow  lattices  the  sleepy- 


FOLLE-FARINE.  13T 

eyes  and  curly  heads  of  children  peered,  while  their 
finders  played  with  the  fanciful  incrustations  of  the  frost. 

The  keeper  of  the  tavern  was  unbarring"  his  house  door ; 
a  girl  broke  the  ice  in  a  pool  for  her  ducks  to  get  at  the 
water ;  a  few  famished  robins  flew  to  and  fro  songless. 

His  own  wife  was  on  her  doorstep ;  to  her  he  darted. 

"  Manon  Dax  is  dead  ! "  he  shouted. 

u  What  of  that?"  said  his  wife  shouldering  her  broom  ; 
a  great  many  had  died  that  winter,  and  they  were  so 
poor  and  sharp-set  with  famine  themselves,  that  they  had 
neither  bread  nor  pity  to  spare. 

"This  of  that,  "  said  the  man,  doggedly,  and  full  of 
the  excitement  of  his  own  terrors.  "  The  young  devil  of 
Ypres  has  killed  her,  that  I  am  sure.  She  is  there  in  the 
hut,  in  the  dark,  with  her  eyes  glaring  like  coals.  And  for 
what  should  she  be  there  if  not  for  evil?  Tell  me 
that." 

"  Is  it  possible  ?"  his  wife  cried,  incredulous,  yet  will- 
ing to  believe  ;  while  the  girl  left  her  ducks,  and  the 
wineshop-keeper  his  door,  and  the  women  their  cabins, 
and  came  and  stood  round  the  bearer  of  such  strange 
news.  It  was  very  welcome  news  in  a  raw  frost-bitten 
dawn,  when  a  day  was  beginning  that  would  otherwise 
have  had  nothing  more  wonderful  in  it  than  tidings  of 
how  a  litter  of  black  pigs  throve,  and  how  a  brown  horse 
had  fared  with  the  swelling  in  the  throat. 

They  were  very  dull  there  from  year's  end  to  year's 
end ;  once  a  month,  maybe,  a  letter  would  come  in  from 
some  soldier-son  or  brother,  or  a  peddler  coming  to  buy 
eggs  would  bring  likewise  some  stray  rumor  from  the 
outer  world  ; — beyond  this  there  was  no  change.  They 
heard  nothing,  and  saw  nothing,  seldom  moving  a  league 
away  from  that  gray  stone  crucifix,  round  which  their 
little  homes  were  clustered. 

This  man  had  nothing  truly  to  tell ;  he  had  fled  hor- 
rified to  be  challenged  in  the  twilight,  and  the  snow,  by 
a  creature  of  such  evil  omen  as  Folle-Farine.  But  when 
he  had  got  an  audience,  he  was  too  true  an  orator  and 
not  such  a  fool  as  to  lose  it  for  such  a  little  beggarly  mat- 
ter as  truth ;  and  his  tongue  clacked  quickly  of  all  which 
his  fears  and  fancies  had  conceived,  until  he  had  talked 
12* 


138  FOLLE-FARTNE. 

himself  and  bis  listeners  into  the  full  belief  that  Manon 
Dax  being  belated  had  encountered  the  evil  glance  of  the 
daughter  of  all  evil,  and  had  been  slain  thereby  in  most 
cruel  sorcery. 

Now,  in  the  whole  neighborhood  there  was  nothing 
too  foul  to  be  accredited  of  the  begotten  of  the  fiend  : — a 
fiend,  whom  all  the  grown  men  and  women  remembered 
so  well  in  his  earthly  form,  when  he  had  come  to  ruin 
poor  Reine  Flamma's  body  and  soul,  with  his  eyes  like 
jewels,  and  his  strength  passing  the  strength  of  all  men. 

The  people  listened,  gaping,  and  wonder-struck,  and 
forgetting  the  bitterness  of  the  cold,  being  warmed  with 
those  unfailing  human  cordials  of  foul  suspicion  and  of 
gratified  hatred.  Some  went  off  to  their  daily  labor,  being 
unable  to  spare  time  for  more  gossip ;  but  divers  women, 
who  had  nothing  to  occupy  them,  remained  about  Flandrin. 

A  shriveled  dame,  who  owned  the  greatest  number  of 
brood-hens  in  the  village,  who  had  only  one  son,  a  priest, 
and  who  was  much  respected  and  deferred  to  by  her 
neighbors,  spoke  first  when  Flandrin  had  ended  his  tale 
for  the  seventh  time,  it  being  a  little  matter  to  him  that 
his  two  hungry  cows  would  be  lowing  all  the  while  vainly 
for  their  morning  meal. 

"Flandrin,  you  have  said  well,  beyond  a  doubt;  the 
good  soul  has  been  struck  dead  by  sorcery.  But,  you 
have  forgot  one  thing,  the  children  are  there,  and  that 
devil  of  Ypres  is  with  them.  We — good  Christians  and 
true — should  not  let  such  things  be.  Go,  and  drive  her 
out  and  bring  the  young  ones  hither." 

Flandrin  stood  silent.  It  was  very  well  to  say  that 
the  devil  should  be  driven  out,  but  it  was  not  so  well  to 
be  the  driver. 

"  That  is  as  it  should  be,"  assented  the  other  women. 
"  Go,  Flandrin,  and  we — we  will  take  the  little  souls  in 
for  this  day,  and  then  give  them  to  the  public  charity; 
better  cannot  be  done.     Go." 

"But  mind  that  thou  dost  strike  that  beast,  Folle- 
Farine,  sharply,"  cried  his  wife. 

"  If  thou  showest  her  the  cross,  she  will  have  to  grovel 
and  flee,"  said  another. 

"  Not  she,"  grumbled  the  old  dame,  whose  son  was  a 


FOLLE-FARINE.  139 

priest.  "  One  day  my  blessed  son,  who  is  nearly  a  saint, 
Heaven  knows,  menaced  her  with  his  cross,  and  she 
stood  straight,  and  fearless,  and  looked  at  it,  and  said  ■  By 
that  sign  you  do  all  manner  of  vileness  in  this  world,  and 
say  you  are  to  be  blest  in  another;  I  know!'  and  so 
laughed  and  went  on.  What  are  you  to  do  with  a  witch 
like  that,— eh  ?» 

H  Go,  Flandrin,"  shrieked  the  women  in  chorus.  "  Go  ! 
Every  minute  you  waste,  the  little  angels  are  nearer  to 
hell  1" 

"  Come  yourselves  with  me,  then,"  said  Flandrin,  sul- 
lenly. "  I  will  not  go  after  those  infants,  it  is  not  a  man's 
work." 

In  his  own  mind  he  was  musing  on  a  story  his  priests 
had  often  told  him,  of  swine  into  which  exorcised  devils 
had  entered,  and  dispatched  swiftly  down  a  slope  to  a 
miserable  end  ;  and  he  thought  of  his  own  pigs,  black, 
fat,  and  happy,  worth  so  much  to  him  in  the  market. 
Better,  he  mused,  that  Manon  Dax's  grandchildren  should 
be  the  devil's  prey,  than  those,  his  choicest,  swine. 

The  women  jeered  him,  menaced  him,  flouted  him,  be- 
sought him.  But  vainly — he  would  not  move  alone. 
He  had  become  possessed  with  the  terrors  that  his  own 
fancy  had  created ;  and  he  would  not  stir  a  step  for  all 
their  imprecations. 

11  Let  us  go  ourselves,  then  !"  screamed  his  wife  at 
length,  flourishing  above  her  head  the  broom  with  which 
she  had  swept  the  snow.  "  Men  are  forever  cowards. 
It  shall  never  be  said  of  me,  that  I  left  those  babes  to  the 
x  fiend  while  I  gave  my  own  children  their  porridge  by  the 
fire  !" 

There  was  a  sentiment  in  this  that  stirred  all  her  com- 
panions to  emulation.  They  rushed  into  their  homes, 
snatched  a  shovel,  a  staff,  a  broom,  a  pegstick,  each  what- 
ever came  uppermost,  and,  dragging  Flandrin  in  the 
midst,  went  down  the  sloping  frozen  road  between  its 
fringe  of  poplars.  They  were  not  very  sure  in  their  own 
minds  why  they  went,  nor  for  what  they  went ;  but  they 
had  a  vague  idea  of  doing  what  was  wise  and  pious,  and 
they  had  a  grea^iate  in  their  hearts  against  her. 

They  sped  as  fast  as  the  slippery  road  would  let  them, 


140  FOLLE-FARINE. 

and  their  tongues  flew  still  faster  than  their  feet ;  the  cold 
of  the  daybreak  made  them  sharp  and  keen  on  their  prey  j 
they  screamed  themselves  hoarse,  their  voices  rising 
shrilly  above  the  whistling  of  the  winds,  and  the  creaking 
of  the  trees  ;  and  they  inflamed  each  other  with  ferocious 
belief  in  the  sorcery  the^  were  to  punish. 

They  were  in  their  way  virtuous ;  they  were  content 
on  very  little,  they  toiled  hard  from  their  birth  to  their 
grave,  they  were  most  of  them  chaste  wives  and  devoted 
mothers,  they  bore  privation  steadily,  and  they  slaved  in 
fair  weather  and  foul  without  a  complaint.  But  they 
were  narrow  of  soul,  greedy  of  temper,  bigoted  and 
uncharitable,  and,  where  they  thought  themselves  or  their 
offspring  menaced,  implacable.  They  were  of  the  stuff 
that  would  be  burned  for  a  creed,  and  burn  others  for 
another  creed.  It  is  the  creed  of  the  vast  majority  of 
every  nation  ;  the  priests  and  lawgivers  of  every  nation 
have  always  told  their  people  that  it  is  a  creed  holy  and 
honorable — how  can  the  people  know  that  it  is  at  once 
idiotic  and  hellish  ? 

Folle-Farine  sat  within  on  the  damp  hay  under  the 
broken  roof,  and  watched  the  open  door. 

The  children  were  still  asleep.  The  eldest  one  in  his 
sleep  had  turned  and  caught  her  hand,  and  held  it. 

She  did  not  care  for  them.  They  had  screamed,  and 
run  behind  the  woodstack,  or  their  grandam's  skirts,  a 
hundred  times  when  they  had  seen  her  on  the  road  or  in 
the  orchard.  But  she  was  sorry  for  them ;  almost  as 
sorry  as  she  was  for  the  little  naked  woodpigeons  when 
their  nests  were  scattered  on  the  ground  in  a  tempest,  or 
for  the  little  starveling  rabbits  when  they  screamed  in 
their  holes  for  the  soft,  white  mother  that  was  lying,  tor- 
tured and  twisted,  in  the  jaws  of  a  steel  trap. 

She  was  sorry  for  them — half  roughly,  half  tenderly — 
with  some  shame  at  her  own  weakness,  and  yet  too  sin- 
cerely sorry  to  be  able  to  persuade  herself  to  leave  them 
to  their  fate  there,  all  alone  with  their  dead. 

For  in  the  savage  heart  of  Taric's  daughter  there  was 
an  innermost  corner  wherein  her  mother's  nature  slept. 

She  sat  there  quite  still,  watching  th^open  porch  and 
listening  for  footsteps. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  141 

The  snow  was,  driven  in  circling  clouds  by  the  winds ; 
the  dense  fog  of  the  dawn  lifted  itself  off  the  surrounding 
fields ;  the  brauches  of  the  trees  were  beautiful  with 
hanging  icicles ;  from  the  meadow  hard  by  there  wailed 
unceasingly  the  mournful  moaning  of  Flandrin's  cattle, 
deserted  of  their  master  and  hungry  in  their  wooden  sheds. 

She  heard  a  distant  convent  clock  strike  six  :  no  one 
came.  Yet,  she  had  resolved  not  to  leave  the  children 
all  alone;  though  Flamma  should  come  and  find  her  there, 
and  thrash  her  for  her  absence  from  his  tasks.  So  she 
sat  still  and  waited. 

After  a  little  she  heard  the  crisp  cracking  of  many  feet 
on  the  frozen  snow  and  ice-filled  ruts  of  the  narrow  road  ; 
she  heard  a  confused  clatter  of  angry  voices  breaking 
harshly  on  the  stillness  of  the  winter  morning. 

The  light  was  stronger  now,  and  through  the  doorway 
she  saw  the  little  passionate  crowd  of  angry  faces  as  tho 
women  pressed  onward  down  the  hill  with  Flandrin  in 
their  midst. 

She  rose  and  looked  out  at  them  quietly. 

For  a  minute  they  paused  —  irresolute,  silent,  per- 
plexed :  at  the  sight  of  her  they  were  half  daunted  ;  they 
felt  the  vagueness  of  the  crime  they  came  to  bring  against 
her. 

The  wife  of  Flandrin  recovered  speech  first,  and  dared 
them  to  the  onslaught. 

"  What  I"  she  screamed,  "  nine  good  Christians  fearful 
of  one  daughter  of  hell  ?  Fie  !  for  shame  !  Look  ;  my 
leaden  Peter  is  round  my  neck !  Is  he  not  stronger  than 
she  any  day  ?" 

In  a  moment  more,  thus  girded  at  and  guarded  at  the 
same  time,  they  were  through  the  door -and  on  the  mud 
floor  of  the  hearth,  close  to  her,  casting  hasty  glances  at 
the  poor  dead  body  on  the  hearth,  whose  fires  they  had 
left  to  die  out  all  through  that  bitter  winter.  They  came 
about  her  in  a  fierce,  gesticulating,  breathless  troop,  flour- 
ishing their  sticks  in  her  eyes,  and  casting  at  her  a 
thousand  charges  in  one  breath. 

Flandrin  stood  a  little  aloof,  sheepishly  on  the  threshold, 
wishing  he  had  never  said  a  word  of  the  death  of  Manon 
Dax  to'his  good  wife  and  neighbors. 


142  FOLLE-FARINE. 

"  You  met  that  poor  saint  and  killed  her  in  the  snow 
with  your  witcheries  !"  one  cried. 

M  You  have  stifled  that  poor  babe  where  it  lay  lw  cried 
another. 

"  A  good  woman  like  that  I"  shrieked  a  third,  "  who 
was  well  and  blithe  and  praising  God  only  a  day  ago,  for 
I  saw  her  myself  come  down  the  hill  for  our  well  water  1" 

"  It  is  as  you  did  with  the  dear  little  Remy,  who  will 
be  lame  all  his  life  through  you,"  hissed  a  fourth.  "  You 
are  not  fit  to  live ;  you  spit  venom  like  a  toad." 

"  Are  you  alive,  my  angels  tn  said  a  fifth,  waking  the 
three  children  noisily,  and  rousing  their  piercing  cries. 
**  Are  you  alive  after  that  witch  has  gazed  on  you  ?  It 
is  a  miracle  !     The  saints  be  praised  1" 

Folle-Farine  stood  mute  and  erect  for  the  moment,  not 
comprehending  why  they  thus  with  one  accord  fell  upon 
her.  She  pointed  to  the  bodies  on  the  hearth,  with  one 
of  those  grave  and  dignified  gestures  which  were  her 
birthright. 

"  She  was  cold  and  hungry,"  she  said  curtly,  her  mel- 
low accent  softening  and  enriching  the  provincial  tongue 
which  she  had  learned  from  those  amidst  whom  she  dwelt. 
"  She  had  fallen,  and  was  dying.  I  brought  her  here. 
The  young  child  was  killed  by  the  snow.  I  stayed  with 
the  rest  because  they  were  frightened,  and  alone.  There 
is  no  more  to  tell.     What  of  it?" 

11  Thou  hadst  better  come  away.  What  canst  thou 
prove  ?"  whispered  Flandrin  to  his  wife. 

He  was  afraid  of  the  storm  he  had  invoked,  and  would 
fain  have  stilled  it.  But  that  was  beyond  his  power. 
The  women  had  not  come  forth  half  a  league  in  the  howl- 
ing winds  of  a  midwinter  daybreak  only  to  go  back  with 
a  mere  charity  done,  and  with  no  vengeance  taken. 

They  hissed,  they  screamed,  they  hurled  their  rage  at 
her ;  they  accused  her  of  a  thousand  crimes  ;  they  filled 
the  hut  with  clamor  as  of  a  thousand  tongues  ;  they 
foamed,  they  spat,  they  struck  at  her  with  their  sticks ; 
and  she  stood  quiet,  looking  at  them,  and  the  old  dead 
face  of  Manon  Dax  lay  upward  in  the  dim  light. 

The  eldest  boy  struggled  in  the  grasp  of  the  peasant 
woman  who  had  seized  him,  and  stretched  his  arms,  in- 


FOLLE-FARINE.  U3 

stead,  to  the  one  who  had  fed  him  and  whose  hand  he 
had  held  all  through  his  restless  slumber  in  that  long  and 
dreary  night. 

The  woman  covered  his  eyes  with  a  scream. 

"  Ah — h  1"  she  moaned,  u  see  how  the  innocent  child 
is  bewitched  !     It  is  horrible  !" 

11  Look  on  that; — oh,  infernal  thing  !"  cried  Flandrin's 
wife,  lifting  up  her  treasured  figure  of  Peter.  "  You  dare 
not  face  that  blessed  image.  See — see  all  of  you — how 
she  winces,  and  turns  white  !" 

Folle-Farine  had  shrunk  a  little  as  the  child  had  called 
her.  Its  gesture  of  affection  was  the  first  that  she  had 
ever  seen  towards  her  in  any  human  thing. 

She  laughed  aloud  as  the  image  of  Peter  was  thrust  in 
her  face.  She  saw  it  was  some  emblem  and  idol  of  their 
faith,  devoutly  cherished.  She  stretched  her  hand  out, 
wrenched  it  away,  trampled  on  it,  and  tossed  it  through 
-the  doorway  into  the  snow,  where  it  sank  and  disap- 
peared.    Then  she  folded  her  arms,  and  waited  for  them. 

There  was  a  shriek  at  the  blasphemy  of  the  impious 
act ;  then  they  rushed  on  her. 

They  came  inflamed  with  all  the  fury  which  abject  fear 
and  bigoted  hatred  can  beget  in  minds  of  the  lowest  and 
most  brutal  type.  They  were  strong,  rude,  ignorant, 
fanatical  peasants,  and  tbey  abhorred  her,  and  they 
believed  no  child  of  theirs  to  be  safe  in  its  bed  while  she 
walked  alive  abroad.  Beside  such  women,  when  in 
wrath  and  riot,  the  tiger  and  the  hyena  are  as  the  lamb 
and  the  dove. 

They  set  on  her  with  furious  force  ;  they  flung  her,  they 
trod  on  her,  they  beat  her,  they  kicked  her  with  their 
wood-shod  feet,  with  all  the  malignant  fury  of  the  female 
animal  that  fights  for  its  offspring's  and  its  own  security. 

Strong  though  she  was,  and  swift,  and  full  of  courage, 
she  had  no  power  against  the  numbers  who  had  thrown 
themselves  on  her,  and  borne  her  backward  by  dint  of 
their  united  effort,  and  held  her  down  to  work  their  worst 
on  her.  She  could  not  free  herself  to  return  their  blows, 
nor  lift  herself  to  wrestle  with  them  ;  she  could  only  deny 
them  the  sweetness  of  wringing  from  her  a  single  cry, 
and  that  she  did.     She  was  mute  while  the  rough  hands 


144  FOLLE-FARINE. 

flew  at  her,  the  sticks  struck  at  her,  the  heavy  feet  were 
driven  against  her  body,  and  the  fierce  fingers  clutched 
at  her  hair,  and  twisted  and  tore  it, — she  was  quite  mute 
throughout. 

"  Prick  her  in  the  breast,  and  see  if  the  devil  be  still  in 
her.  I  have  heard  say  there  is  no  better  way  to  test  a 
witch  1"  cried  Flandrin's  wife,  writhing  in  rage  for  the 
outrage  to  the  Petrus. 

Her  foes  needed  no  second  bidding ;  they  had  her 
already  prostrate  in  their  midst,  and  a  dozen  eager,  vio- 
lent hands  seized  a  closer  grip  upon  her,  pulled  her 
clothes  from  her  chest,  and,  holding  her  down  on  the 
mud  floor,  searched  with  ravenous  eyes  for  the  signet 
marks  of  hell.  The  smooth,  soft  skin  baffled  them ;  its 
rich  and  tender  hues  were  without  spot  or  blemish. 

"What  matter, — what  matter?"  hissed  Rose  Fiandrin. 
"  When  our  fathers  hunted  witches  in  the  old  time,  did 
they  stop  for  that?     Draw  blood,  and  you  will  see." 

She  clutched  a  jagged,  rusty  nail  from  out  the  wall,  and 
leaned  over  her  prey. 

u  It  is  the  only  babe  that  will  ever  cling  to  thee !"  she 
cried,  with  a  laugh,  as  the  nail  drew  blood  above  the 
heart. 

Still  Folle-Farine  made  no  sound  and  asked  no  mercy. 
She  was  powerless,  defenseless,  flung  on  her  back  amidst 
her  tormentors,  fastened  down  by  treading  feet  and 
clinching  hands ;  she  could  resist  in  nothing,  she  could 
not  stir  a  limb;  still  she  kept  silence,  and  her  proud 
eyes  looked  unquailing  into  the  hateful  faces  bent  to 
hers. 

The  muscles  and  nerves  of  her  body  quivered  with  a 
mighty  pang,  her  chest  heaved  with  the  torture  of  indig- 
nity, her  heart  fluttered  like  a  wounded  bird, — not  at  the 
physical  pain,  but  at  the  shame  of  these  women's  gaze, 
the  loathsome  contact  of  their  hands. 

The  iron  pierced  deeper,  but  they  could  not  make  her 
speak.  Except  for  her  eyes,  which  glowed  with  a  dusky 
fire  as  they  glanced  to  and  fro,  seeking  escape,  she  might 
have  been  a  statue  of  olive-wood,  flung  down  by  ruffians 
to  make  a  bonfire. 

u  If  one  were  to  drive  the  nail  to  the  head,  she  would 


FOLLE-FARINE.  145 

not  feel !"  cried  the  women,  in  furious  despair,  and  were 
minded,  almost,  to  put  her  to  that  uttermost  test. 

Suddenly,  from  the  doorway,  Flandrin  raised  an 
alarm : 

"  There  is  our  notary  close  at  hand,  on  the  road  on  his 
mule!  Hist!  Come  out  quickly  !  You  know  how  strict 
he  is,  and  how  he  forbids  us  ever  to  try  and  take  the  law 
into  our  own  keeping.  Quick — as  you  love  your  lives — 
quick!" 

The  furies  left  their  prey,  and  scattered  and  fled ;  the 
notary  was  a  name  of  awe  to  them,  for  he  was  a  severe 
man  but  just. 

They  seized  the  children,  went  out  with  them  into  the 
road,  closed  the  hut  door  behind  them,  and  moved  down 
the  hill,  the  two  younger  wailing  sadly,  and  the  eldest 
trying  to  get  from  them  and  go  back. 

The  women  looked  mournful  and  held  their  heads 
down,  and  comforted  the  little  ones;  Flandrin  himself 
went  to  his  cattle  in  the  meadow. 

"  Is  anything  amiss  ?"  the  old  white-haired  notary 
asked,  stopping  his  gray  mule  at  sight  of  the  little  caval- 
cade. 

The  women,  weeping,  told  him  that  Manon  Dax  was 
dead,  and  the  youngest  infant  likewise — of  cold,  in  the 
night,  as  they  supposed.  They  dared  to  say  no  more, 
for  he  had  many  times  rebuked  them  for  their  lack  of 
charity  and  their  bigoted  cruelties  and  superstitions,  and 
they  were  quaking  with  fear  lest  he  should  by  any  chance 
enter  the  cottage  and  see  their  work. 

"  Flandrin,  going  to  his  cow,  saw  her  first,  and  he  came 
to  us  and  told  us,"  they  added,  crossing  themselves  fer- 
vently, and  hushing  little  Bernardou,  who  wanted  to  get 
from  them  and  return;  "and  we  have  taken  the  poor 
little  things  to  carry  them  home;  we  are  going  to  give 
them  food,  and  warm  them  awhile  by  the  stove,  and  then 
we  shall  come  back  and  do  all  that  is  needful  for  the  be- 
loved dead  who  are  within." 

"  That  is  well.  That  is  good  and  neighborly  of  you," 
said  the  notary,  who  liked  them,  having  married  them 
all,  and  registered  all  their  children's  births,  and  who  was 
a  good  old  man,  though  stern. 

13 


146  FOLLE-FARINE. 

He  promised  them  to  see  for  his  part  that  all  needed  by 
the  law  and  by  the  church  should  be  done  for  their  old 
lost  neighbor ;  and  then  he  urged  his  mule  into  a  trot, 
for  he  had  been  summoned  to  a  rich  man's  sick-bed  in 
that  early  winter  morning,  and  was  in  haste  lest  the 
priest  should  be  beforehand  with  him  there. 

"  How  tender  the  poor  are  to  the  poor  !  Those  people 
have  not  bread  enough  for  themselves,  and  yet  they 
burden  their  homes  with  three  strange  mouths.  Their 
hearts  must  be  true  at  the  core,  if  their  tongues  some- 
times be  foul,"  he  mused,  as  he  rode  the  mule  down 
through  the  fog. 

The  women  went  on,  carrying  and  dragging  the  chil- 
dren with  them,  in  a  sullen  impatience. 

"  To  think  we  should  have  had  to  leave  that  fiend  of 
Ypres!"they  muttered  in  their  teeth.  "  Well,  there  is 
one  thing,  she  will  not  get  over  the  hurt  for  days.  Her 
bones  will  be  stiff  for  many  a  week.  That  will  teach 
her  to  leave  honest  folk  alone." 

And  they  traversed  the  road  slowly,  muttering  to  one 
another. 

"  Hold  thy  noise,  thou  little  pig  !"  cried  Flandrin's  wife, 
pushing  Bernardou  on  before  her.  u  Hold  thy  noise,  I 
tell  you,  or  I  will  put  you  in  the  black  box  in  a  hole  in 
the  ground,  along  with  thy  great-grandmother." 

But  Bernardou  wept  aloud,  refusing  to  be  comforted  or 
terrified  into  silence.  He  was  old  enough  to  know  that 
never  more  would  the  old  kindly  withered  brown  face 
bend  over  him  as  he  woke  in  the  morning,  nor  the  old 
kindly  quavering  voice  croon  him  country  ballads  and 
cradle  songs  at  twilight  by  the  bright  wood  fire. 

Little  by  little  the  women  carrying  the  children  crept 
down  the  slippery  slope,  half  ice  and  half  mud  in  the 
thaw,  and  entered  their  own  village,  and  therein  were 
much  praised  for  their  charity  and  courage. 

For  when  they  praise,  as  when  they  abuse,  villages  are 
loud  of  voice  and  blind  of  eye  almost  as  much  as  are  the 
cities. 

Their  tongues  and  those  of  their  neighbors  clacked  all 
day  long,  noisily  and  bravely,  of  their  good  and  their 
great  deeds  ;  they  had  all  the  sanctity  of  martyrdom,  and 


FOLLE-FARINE.  14f 

all  the  glory  of  victory,  in  one.  True,  they  have  left  all 
their  house  and  field-work  half  done.  "But  the  Holy  Peter 
will  finish  it  in  his  own  good  time,  and  avenge  himself 
for  his  outrage,"  mused  the  wife  of  Flandrin,  sorrowing 
over  her  lost  Petrus  in  the  snowdrift,  and  boxing  the 
ears  of  little  Bernardou  to  make  him  cease  from  his  weep- 
ing, where  he  was  huddled  in  her  chimney  corner. 

When  they  went  back  with  their  priest  at  noon  to  the 
hut  of  old  Manon  Dax  to  make  her  ready  for  her  burial, 
they  trembled  inwardly  lest  they  should  find  their  victim 
there,  and  lest  she  should  lift  up  her  voice  in  accusation 
against  them.  Their  hearts  misgave  them  sorely.  Their 
priest,  a  cobbler's  son,  almost  as  ignorant  as  themselves, 
save  that  he  could  gabble  a  few  morsels  of  bad  Latin, 
would  be,  they  knew,  on  their  side ;  but  they  were  sen- 
sible that  they  had  let  their  fury  hurry  them  into  acts 
that  could  easily  be  applauded  by  their  neighbors,  but  not 
so  easily  justified  to  the  law. 

"  For  the  law  is  overgood,"  said  Rose  Flandrin,  "and 
takes  the  part  of  all  sorts  of  vile  creatures.  It  will 
protect  a  rogue,  a  brigand,  a  bullock,  a  dog,  a  witch, 
a  devil  —  anything, — except  now  and  then  an  honest 
woman." 

But  their  fears  were  groundless ;  she  was  gone ;  the 
hut  when  they  entered  it  had  no  tenants,  except  the  life- 
less famished  bodies  of  the  old  grandam  and  the  year-old 
infant. 

When  Folle-Farine  had  heard  the  hut  door  close,  and 
the  steps  of  her  tormentors  die  away  down  the  hill,  she 
had  tried  vainly  several  times  to  raise  herself  from  the 
floor,  and  had  failed. 

She  had  been  so  suddenly  attacked  and  flung  down 
and  trampled  on,  that  her  brain  had  been  deadened,  and 
her  senses  had  gone,  for  the  first  sharp  moment  of  the 
persecution. 

As  she  lifted  herself  slowly,  and  staggered  to  her  feet, 
and  saw  the  blood  trickle  where  the  nail  had  pierced  her 
breast,  she  understood  what  had  happened  to  her ;  her 
face  grew  savage  and  dark,  her  eyes  fierce  and  lustful, 
like  the  eyes  of  some  wild  beast  rising  wounded  in  his 
lair. 


148  FOLLE-FARINE. 

It  was  not  for  the  hart  she  cared  ;  it  was  the  shame  of 
defeat  and  outrage  that  stung  her  like  a  whip  of  asps. 

She  stood  awhile  looking  at  the  face  of  the  woman  she 
had  aided. 

"  I  tried  to  help  you,"  she  thought.  "  I  was  a  fool. 
I  might  have  known  how  they  pay  any  good  done  to 
them." 

She  was  not  surprised ;  her  mind  had  been  too  dead- 
ened by  a  long  course  of  ill  usage  to  feel  any  wonder  at 
the  treatment  she  had  been  repaid  with. 

She  hated  them  with  the  mute  unyielding  hatred  of 
her  race,  but  she  hated  herself  more  because  she  had 
yielded  to  the  softness  of  sorrow  and  pity  for  any  human 
thing ;  and  more  still  because  she  had  not  been  armed 
and  on  her  guard,  and  had  suffered  them  to  prevail  and 
to  escape  without  her  vengeance. 

"  I  will  never  come  out  without  a  knife  in  my  girdle 
again,"  she  thought — this  was  the  lesson  that  her. charity 
had  brought  her  as  its  teaching. 

She  went  out  hardening  her  heart,  as  she  crept  through 
the  doorway  into  the  snow  and  the  wind,  so  that  she 
should  not  leave  one  farewell  word  or  token  of  gentleness 
with  the  dead,  that  lay  there  so  tranquil  on  the  ashes  of 
the  hearth. 

"  She  lied  even  in  her  last  breath,"  thought  Folle- 
Farine.     "  She  said  that  her  God  was  good !" 

She  could  hardly  keep  on  her  own  homeward  way.  All 
her  limbs  were  stiif  and  full  of  pain.  The  wound  in  her 
chest  was  scarcely  more  than  skin  deep,  yet  it  smarted 
sorely  and  bled  still.  Her  brain  was  dull,  and  her  ears 
filled  with  strange  noises  from  the  force  with  which  she 
had  been  flung  backward  on  her  head. 

She  had  given  her  sheepskin  to  the  children,  as  before 
her  Phratos  had  done ;  and  the  peasants  had  carried  the 
youngest  of  them  away  in  it.  The  sharpness  of  the  in- 
tense cold  froze  the  blood  in  her  as  she  crawled  through 
a  ^ap  in  the  poplar  hedge,  and  under  the  whitened  bram- 
bles and  grasses  beyond,  to  get  backward  to  the  mill  by 
the  path  that  ran  through  the  woods  and  pastures. 

The  sun  had  risen,  but  was  obscured  by  fog,  through 
which  it  shed  a  dull  red  ray  here  and  there  above  the 
woods  in  the  east. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  149 

It  was  a  bitter  morning',  and  the  wind,  though  it  had 
abated,  was  still  rough,  and  drove  the  snow  in  clouds  of 
powder  hither  and  thither  over  the  fields.  She  could 
only  move  very  slowly ;  the  thorns  tearing  her,  the  snow 
blinding  her,  the  icicles  lacerating  her  bare  feet  as  she 
moved. 

She  wondered,  dimly,  why  she  lived.  It  seemed  to 
her  that  the  devil  when  he  had  made  her,  must  have  made 
her  out  of  sport  and  cruelty,  and  then  tossed  her  into  the 
world  to  be  a  scapegoat  and  a  football  for  any  creature 
that  might  need  one. 

That  she  might  end  her  own  life  never  occurred  to  her  ; 
her  intelligence  was-  not  awake  enough  to  see  that  she 
need  not  bear  its  burden  one  hour  more,  so  long  as  there 
was  one  pool  in  the  woods  deep  enough  to  drown  her 
under  its  green  weeds  and  lily  leaves  any  cool  summer 
night ;  or  that  she  had  but  to  lie  down  then  and  there, 
where  she  was,  on  the  snow,  beneath  the  ice-dropping 
trees,  and  let  the  sleep  that  weighed  on  her  eyelids  come, 
dreamless  and  painless,  and  there  would  be  an  end  of  all 
for  her,  as  for  the  frozen  rabbits  and  the  birds  that 
strewed  the  upland  meadows,  starved  and  stiff. 

She  did  not  know ; — and  had  she  known,  wretched 
though  existence  was  to  her,  death  would  not  have 
allured  her.  She  saw  that  the  dead  might  be  slapped  on 
their  cheek,  and  could  not  lift  their  arm  to  strike  again — 
a  change  that  would  not  give  her  vengeance  could  have 
had  no  sweetness  and  no  succor  for  her.  The  change  she 
wanted  was  to  live,  and  not  to  die. 

By  tedious  and  painful  efforts,  she  dragged  herself  home 
by  the  way  of  the  lanes  and  pastures ;  hungry,  lame, 
bleeding,  cold  and  miserable,  her  eyes  burning  like  flame, 
her  hands  and  her  head  hot  with  fever. 

She  made  her  way  into  the  mill-yard  and  tried  to  com- 
mence her  first  morning's  work;  the  drawing  of  water 
from  the  well  for  the  beasts  and  for  the  house,  and  the 
sweeping  down  of  the  old  wide  court  round  which  the 
sheds  and  storehouses  ran. 

She  never  dreamed  of  asking  either  for  food  or  pity, 
either  for  sympathy  or  remission  of  her  labors. 

She  set  to  work  at  once,  but  for  the  onlf  time  since 
13* 


150  FOLLE-FARINE. 

Phratos  had  brought  her  thither  the  strength  and  vigor 
of  her  frame  had  been  beaten. 

She  was  sick  and  weak;  her  hand  sank  off  the  handle 
of  the  windlass ;  and  she  dropped  stupidly  on  the  stone 
edge  of  the  well,  and  sat  there  leaning  her  head  on  her 
hands. 

The  mastiff  came  and  licked  her  face  tenderly.  The 
pigeons  left  the  meal  flung  to  them  on  the  snow,  and 
flew  merrily  about  her  head  in  pretty  fluttering  caresses. 
The  lean  cat  came  and  rubbed  its  cheek  softly  against 
her,  purring  all  the  while. 

The  woman  Pitchou  saw  her,  and  she  called  out  of  the 
window  to  her  master, — 

"  Flam  ma  !  there  is  thy  gad-about,  who  has  not  been 
abed  all  night." 

The  old  man  heard,  and  came  out  of  his  mill  to  the 
well  in  the  courtyard. 

"  Where  hast  been  ?"  he  asked  sharply  of  her.  "Pitchou 
says  thou  hast  not  lain  in  thy  bed  all  night  long.  Is  it 
so?" 

Folle-Farine  lifted  her  head  slowly,  with  a  dazed  stupid 
pain  in  her  eyes. 

41  Yes,  it  is  true,"  she  answered,  doggedly. 

"And  where  hast  been,  then?"  he  asked,  through 
his  clinched  teeth  ;  enraged  that  his  servant  had  been 
quicker  of  eye  and  of  ear  than  himself. 

A  little  of  her  old  dauntless  defiance  gleamed  in  her 
face  through  its  stupor  and  languor,  as  she  replied  to  him 
with  effort  in  brief  phrases, — 

"  I  went  after  old  Manon  Dax,  to  give  her  my  supper. 
She  died  in  the  road,  and  I  carried  her  home.  The 
youngest  child  was  dead  too.  I  stayed  there  because  the 
children  were  alone;  I  called  to  Flandrin  and  told  him; 
he  came  with  his  wife  and  other  women,  and  they  said  I 
had  killed  old  Dax  ;  they  set  on  me,  and  beat  me,  and 
pricked  me  for  a  witch.  It  is  no  matter.  But  it  made 
me  late." 

In  her  glance  upward,  even  in  the  curtness  of  her 
words,  there  was  an  unconscious  glimmer  of  appeal, — a 
vague  fancy  that  for  once  she  might,  perhaps,  meet  with 
approval  and' sympathy,  instead  of  punishment  and  con- 


FOLLE-FARINE.  151 

tempt.  She  had  never  heard  a  kind  word  from  him,  nor 
one  of  any  compassion,  and  yet  a  dim,  unuttered  hope 
was  in  her  heart  that  for  once  he  might  condemn  her 
persecutors  and  pardon  her. 

But  the  hope  was  a  vain  one,  like  all  which  she  had 
cherished  since  first  the  door  of  the  mill-house  had  opened 
to  admit  her.  * 

Flamma  only  set  his  teeth  tighter.  In  his  own  soul 
he  had  been  almost  ashamed  of  his  denial  to  his  old 
neighbor,  and  had  almost  feared  that  it  would  lose  him 
the  good  will  of  that  good  heaven  which  had  sent  him  so 
mercifully  such  a  sharp  year  of  famine  to  enrich  him. 
Therefore,  it  infuriated  him  to  think  that  this  offspring  of 
a  foul  sin  should  have  had  pity  and  charity  where  he  had 
lacked  them. 

He  looked  at  her  and  saw,  with  grim  glee,  that  she 
was  black  and  blue  with  bruises,  and  that  the  linen 
which  she  held  together  across  her  bosom  had  been 
stained  with  blood. 

"  Flandrin  and  his  wife  are  honest  people,  and  pious," 
he  said,  in  answer  to  her.  "  When  they  find  a  wench 
out  of  her  bed  at  night,  they  deal  rightly  with  her,  and 
do  not  hearken  to  any  lies  that  she  may  tell  them  of 
feigned  almsgiving  to  cover  her  vices  from  their  sight. 
I  thank  them  that  they  did  so  much  of  my  work  for  me. 
They  might  well  prick  thee  for  a  witch ;  but  they  will 
never  cut  so  deep  into  thy  breast  as  to  be  able  to  dig  the 
mark  of  the  devil  out  of  it.  Now,  up  and  work,  or  it  will 
be  the  worse  for  thee." 

She  obeyed  him. 

There,  during  the  dark  winter's  day,  the  pain  which 
she  endured,  with  her  hunger  and  the  cold  of  the  weather, 
made  her  fall  thrice  like  a  dead  thing  on  the  snow  of  the 
court  and  the  floors  of  the  sheds. 

But  she  lay  insensible  till  the  youth  in  her  brought 
back  consciousness,  without  aid.  In  those  moments  of 
faintness,  no  one  noticed  her  save  the  dog,  who  came  and 
crept  to  her  to  give  her  warmth,  and  strove  to  wake  her 
with  the  kisses  of  his  rough  tongue. 

She  did  her  work  as  best  she  might ;  neither  Flamma 
nor  his  servant  once  spoke  to  her. 


152  FOLLE-FARINE. 

11  My  women  dealt  somewhat  roughly  with  thy  wench 
at  break  of  day,  good  Flamma,"  said  the  man  Plandrin, 
meeting  him  in  the  lane  that  afternoon,  and  fearful  of 
offending  the  shrewd  old  man,  who  had  so  many  of 
his  neighbors  in  his  grip.  "  I  hope  thou  wilt  not  take 
it  amiss?  The  girl  maddened  my  dame, — spitting  on 
her  Peter,  and  throwing  the  blessed  image  away  in  a 
ditch." 

"  The  woman  did  well,"  said  Flamma,  coldly,  driving 
his  gray  mare  onward  through  the  fog ;  and  Flandrin 
could  not  tell  whether  he  were  content,  or  were  dis- 
pleased. 

Claudis  Flamma  himself  hardly  knew  which  he  was. 
He  held  her  as  the  very  spawn  of  hell ;  and  yet  it  was 
loathsome  to  him  that  his  neighbors  should  also  know 
and  say  that  a  devil  had  been  the  only  fruit  of  that  fair 
offspring  of  his  own,  whom  he  and  they  had  so  long  held 
as  a  saint. 

The  next  day,  and  the  next,  and  the  next  again  after 
that,  she  was  too  ill  to  stir;  they  beat  her  and  called  her 
names,  but  it  was  of  no  use ;  they  could  not  get  work 
out  of  her ;  she  was  past  it,  and  beyond  all  rousing  of 
their  sticks,  or  of  their  words. 

They  were  obliged  to  let  her  be.  She  lay  for  nearly 
four  days  in  the  hay  in  her  loft,  devoured  with  fever,  and 
with  every  bone  and  muscle  in  pain.  She  had  a  pitcher 
of  water  by  her,  and  drank  continually,  thirstily,  like  a 
sick  dog.  With  rest  and  no  medicine  but  the  cold  spring 
wTater,  she  recovered:  she  had  been  delirious  in  a  few 
of  the  hours,  and  had  dreamed  of  nothing  but  of  the  old 
life  in  the  Liebana,  and  of  the  old  sweet  music  of  Phratos. 
She  remained  there  untended,  shivering,  and  fever- 
stricken,  until  the  strength  of  her  youth  returned  to  her. 
She  rose  on  the  fifth  day  recovered,  weaker,  but  other- 
wise little  the  worse,  with  the  soft  sad  songs  of  her  old 
friend  the  viol  ringing  always  through  her  brain. 

The  fifth  day  from  the  death  of  Manon  Dax,  was  the 
day  of  the  new  year. 

There  was  no  work  being  done  at  the  mill ;  the  wheel 
stood  still,  locked  fast,  for  the  deep  stream  was  close 
bound  in  ice;  frost  had  returned,  and  the  country  was 


FOLLE-FARINE.  153 

white  with  snow  two  feet  deep,  and  bleak  and  bare,  and 
rioted  over  by  furious  cross  winds. 

Flam  ma  and  Pitchou  were  in  the  kitchen  when  she 
entered  it;  they  looked  up,  but  neither  spoke  to  her.  In 
being  ill, — for  the  first  time  since  they  had  had  to  do  with 
her, — she  had  committed,  for  the  millionth  time,  a  crime. 

There  was  no  welcome  for  her  in  that  cheerless  place, 
where  scarcely  a  spark  of  fire  was  allowed  to  brighten 
the  hearth,  where  the  hens  straying  in  from  without,  sat 
with  ruffled  feathers,  chilled  and  moping,  and  where  the 
old  Black  Forest  clock  in  the  corner,  had  stopped  from 
the  intense  cold,  and  grimly  pointed  midnight,  at  high 
noon. 

There  was  no  welcome  for  her :  she  went  out  into  the 
air,  thinking  the  woods,  even  at  midwinter,  could  not  be 
so  lonesome  as  was  that  cheerless  house. 

The  sun  was  shining  through  a  rift  in  the  stormy 
clouds,  and  the  white  roofs,  and  the  ice-crusted  waters, 
and  the  frosted  trees  were  glittering  in  its  light. 

There  were  many  dead  birds  about  the  paths.  Claudis 
Flamma  had  thought  their  famine  time  a  good  one  in 
which  to  tempt  them  with  poisoned  grain. 

She  wondered  where  the  dog  was  who  never  had  failed 
to  greet  her, — a  yard  farther  on  she  saw  him.  He  was 
stretched  stiff  and  lifeless  beside  the  old  barrel  that  had 
served  him  as  a  kennel ;  his  master  had  begrudged  him 
the  little  straw  needful  to  keep  him  from  the  hurricanes 
of  those  bitter  nights  ;  and  he  had  perished  quietly  with- 
out a  moan,  like  a  sentinel  slain  at  his  post — frozen  to 
death  in  his  old  age  after  a  life  of  faithfulness  repaid  with 
blows. 

She  stood  by  him  awhile  with  dry  eyes,  but  with  an 
aching  heart.  He  had  loved  her,  and  she  had  loved  him; 
many  a  time  she  had  risked  a  stroke  of  the  lash  to  save 
it  from  his  body  ;  many  a  time  she  had  sobbed  herself  to 
sleep,  in  her  earlier  years,  with  her  arms  curled  round 
him,  as  round  her  only  friend  and  only  comrade  in  bond- 
age and  in  misery.     - 

She  stooped  down,  and  kissed  him  softly  on  his  broad 
grizzled  forehead,  lifted  his  corpse  into  a  place  of  shelter, 
and  covered  it  tenderly,  so  that  he  should  not  be  left  to 


154  FOLLE-FARWE. 

the  crows  and  the  kites,  until  she  should  be  able  to  make 
his  grave  in  those  orchards  which  he  had  loved  so  well 
to  wander  in,  and  in  which  he  and  she  had  spent  all  their 
brief  hours  of  summer  liberty  and  leisure. 

She  shuddered  as  she  looked  her  last  on  him ;  and 
filled  in  the  snow  above  his  tomb,  under  the  old  twisted 
pear-tree,  beneath  which  he  and  she  had  so  often  sat 
together  in  the  long  grasses,  consoling  one  another  for 
scant  fare  and  cruel  blows  by  the  exquisite  mute  sympa- 
thy which  can  exist  betwixt  the  canine  and  the  human 
animal  when  the  two  are  alone,  and  love  and  trust  each 
other  only  out  of  all  the  world. 

Whilst  the  dog  had  lived,  she  had  had  two  friends  ; 
now  that  he  slept  forever  in  the  old  gray  orchard,  she  had 
but  one  left.     She  went  to  seek  this  one. 

Her  heart  ached  for  a  kind  glance — for  a  word  that 
should  be  neither  of  hatred  nor  of  scorn.  It  was  seldom 
that  she  allowed  herself  to  know  such  a  weakness.  She 
had  dauntless  blood  in  her;  she  came  of  a  people  that 
despised  pity,  who  knew  how  to  live  hard  and  to  die 
hard,  without  murmur  or  appeal. 

Yet,  as  she  had  clung  to  the  old  mastiff,  who  was  sav- 
age to  all  save  herself;  so  she  still  clung  to  the  old  man 
Marcellin,  who  to  all  save  herself  was  a  terror  and  a 
name  of  foul  omen. 

He  was  good  to  her  in  his  own  fierce,  rugged  way ;  they 
had  the  kinship  of  the  proscribed ;  and  they  loved  one 
another  in  a  strange,  silent,  savage  manner,  as  a  yearling 
wolf  cub  and  an  aged  grizzled  bear  might  love  each  other 
in  the  depths  of  a  forest,  where  the  foot  of  the  hunter 
and  the  fangs  of  the  hound  were  alike  against  the  young 
and  the  old.       , 

She  had  not  seen  him  for  six  days.  She  felt  ill,  and 
weak,  and  cold,  and  alone.  She  thought  she  would  go 
to  him  in  his  hut,  and  sit  a  little  by  his  lonely  hearth, 
and  hear  him  tell  strange  stories  of  the  marvelous  time 
when  he  was  young,  and  the  world  was  drunk  with  a 
mad  sweet  dream  which  was  never  to  come  true  upon 
earth. 

Her  heart  was  in  wild  revolt,  and  a  futile  hate  gnawed 
ever  in  it. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  155 

She  had  become  used  to  the  indignities  of  the  popu- 
lace, and  the  insults  of  all  the  people  who  went  to  and 
fro  her  grandsire's  place  ;  but  each  one  pierced  deeper 
and  deeper  than  the  last,  and  left  a  longer  scar,  and 
killed  more  and  more  of  the  gentler  and  better  instincts 
that  had  survived  in  her  through  all  the  brutalizing  de- 
basement of  her  life. 

She  could  not  avenge  the  outrage  of  Rose  Flandrin 
and  her  sisterhood,  and,  being  unable  to  avenge  it,  she 
shut  her  mouth  and  said  nothing  of  it,  as  her  habit  was. 
Nevertheless  it  festered  and  rankled  in  her,  and  now  and 
then  the  thought  crossed  her — why  not  take  a  flint  and  a 
bit  of  tow,  and  burn  them  all  in  their  beds  as  they  slept 
in  that  little  hollow  at  the  foot  of  the  hill? 

She  thought  of  it  often — would  she  ever  do  it  ? 

She  did  not  know. 

It  had  a  taint  of  cowardice  in  it;  yet  a  man  that  very 
winter  had  fired  a  farmstead  for  far  less  an  injury,  and 
had  burned  to  death  all  who  had  lain  therein  that  night. 
Why  should  she  not  kill  and  burn  these  also  ?  They  had 
never  essayed  to  teach  her  to  do  better,  and  when  she 
had  tried  to  do  good  to  one  of  them  the  others  had  set 
on  her  as  a  witch. 

In  the  afternoon  of  this  first  day  of  the  year  she  had 
to  pass  through  their  hamlet  to  seek  Marcellin. 

The  sun  was  low  and  red ;  the  dusky  light  glowered 
over  the  white  meadows  and  through  the  leafless  twilight 
of  the  woods;  here  and  there  a  solitary  tree  of  holly 
reared  itself,  scarlet  and  tall,  from  the  snowdrifts ;  here 
and  there  a  sheaf  of  arrowy  reeds  pierced  the  sheets  of 
ice  that  covered  all  the  streams  and  pools. 

The  little  village  lay  with  its  dark  round  roofs,  cosy 
and  warm,  with  all  the  winter  round.  She  strode  through 
it  erect,  and  flashing  her  scornful  eyes  right  and  left;  but 
her  right  hand  was  inside  her  shirt,  and  it  gripped  fast 
the  handle  of  a  knife.  For  such  was  the  lesson  which  the 
reward  for  her  charity  had  taught  her — a  lesson  not  lightly 
to  be  forgotten,  nor  swiftly  to  be  unlearned  again. 

In  its  simple  mode,  the  little  place,  like  its  greater 
neighbors,  kept  high  festival  for  a  fresh  year  begun. 

Its  crucifix  rose,  bare  and  white,  out  of  a  crown  of  fir 


156  FOLLE-FARINE. 

boughs  and  many  wreaths  of  ruddy  berries.  On  its  cabin 
windows  the  light  of  wood  cracking  and  blazing  within 
glowed  brightly.  Through  them  she  saw  many  of  their 
interiors  as  she  went  by  in  the  shadow  without. 

In  one  the  children  knelt  iu  a  circle  round  the  fire, 
roasting  chestnuts  in  the  embers  with  gay  shouts  of 
laughter.  In  another  they  romped  with  their  big  sheep- 
dog, decking  him  with  garlands  of  ivy  and  laurel. 

In  one  little  brown  room  a  betrothal  party  made  merry  ; 
in  another,  that  was  bright  with  Dutch  tiles,  and  hung 
round  with  dried  herbs  and  fruits,  an  old  matron  had  her 
arm  round  the  curly  head  of  a  sailor  lad,  home  for  a  short 
glad  hour. 

In  the  house  of  Flandrin  a  huge  soup-pot  smoked 
with  savory  odor,  and  the  eyes  of  his  wife  were  soft 
^vith  a  tender  mirth  as  she  watched  her  youngest-born 
playing  with  a  Punchinello,  all  bells  aud  bright  colors, 
and  saw  the  elder  ones  cluster  round  a  gilded  Jesus  of 
sugar. 

In  the  wineshop,  the  keeper  of  it,  having  married  a 
wife  that  day,  kept  open  house  to  his  friends,  and  he  and 
they  were  dancing  to  the  music  of  a  horn  and  a  fiddle,  under 
rafters  bedecked  with  branches  of  fir,  with  many-hued 
ribbons,  and  with  little  oil  lamps  that  blew  to  and  fro  in 
the  noise  of  the  romp.  And  all  round  lay  the  dark  still 
woods,  and  in  the  midst  rose  the  crucifix;  and  above,  on 
the  height  of  the  hill,  the  little  old  hut  of  Manon  Dax 
stood  dark  and  empty. 

She  looked  at  it  all,  going  through  it  with  her  hand  on 
her  knife. 

"  One  spark,"  she  thought,  playing  with  the  grim 
temptation  that  possessed  her — "one  spark  on  the  dry 
thatch,  and  what  a  bonfire  they  would  have  for  their 
feasting l" 

The  thought  was  sweet  to  her. 

Injustice  had  made  her  ravenous  and  savage.  When 
she  had  tried  to  do  well  and  to  save  life,  these  people  had 
accused  her  of  taking  it  by  evil  sorcery. 

She  felt  a  longing  to  show  them  what  'evil  -indeed  she 
could  do,  and  to  see  them  burn,  aud  to  hear  them  scream 
vainly,  and  then  to  say  to  them  with  a  laugh,  as  the 


FOLLE-FARINE.  157 

flames  licked  up  their  homes  and  their  lives,  "  Another 
time,  take  care  how  you  awake  a  witch  I" 

Why  did  she  not  do  it  ?  She  did  not  know;  she  had 
brought  out  a  flint  and  tinder  in  the  pouch  that  hung  at 
her  side.  It  would  be  as  easy  as  to  pluck  a  sere  leaf; 
she  knew  that. 

She  stood  still  and  played  with  her  fancy,  and  it  was 
horrible  and  sweet  to  her — so  sweet  because  so  horrible. 

How  soon  their  mirth  would  be  stilled ! 

As  she  stood  thinking  there,  and  seeing  in  fancy  the 
red  glare  that  would  light  up  that  peaceful  place,  and 
hearing  the  roar  of  the  lurid  flames  that  would  drown 
the  music,  and  the  laughter.,  and  the  children's  shouts, 
out  of  the  twilight  there  rose  to  her  a  small,  dark  thing, 
with  a  halo  of  light  round  its  head:  the  thing  was  little 
Bernardou,  and  the  halo  was  the  shine  of  his  curling 
hair  in  the  lingering  light. 

He  caught  her  skirts  in  his  hands,  and  clung  to  her 
and  sobbed. 

"  I  know  you — you  were  good  that  night.  The  people 
all  say  you  are  wicked,  but  you  gave  us  your  food,  and 
held  my  hand.  Take  me  back  to  gran'mere — oh,  take 
me  back !" 

She  was  startled  and  bewildered.  This  child  had 
never  mocked  her,  but  he  had  screamed  and  run  from  her 
in  terror,  and  had  been  told  a  score  of  stories  that  she 
was  a  devil,  who  could  kill  his  body  and  soul. 

M  She  is  dead,  Bernardou,"  she  answered  him  ;  and  her 
voice  was  troubled,  and  sounded  strangely  to  her  as  she 
spoke  for  the  first  time  to  a  child  without  being  derided 
or  screamed  at  in  fear. 

"  Dead  !  What  is  that  ?"  sobbed  the  boy.  "  She  was 
stiff  and  cold,  I  know,  and  they  put  her  in  a  hole ;  but 
she  would  waken,  I  know  she  would,  if  she  only  heard 
us.  We  never  cried  in  the  night  but  she  heard  in  her 
sleep,  and  got  up  and  came  to  us.  Oh,  do  tell  her — do, 
do  tell  her!" 

She  was  silent ;  she  did  not  know  how  to  answer  him, 
and  the  strangeness  of  any  human  appeal  made  to  her 
bewildered  her  and  held  her  mute. 

"  Why  are  you  out  in  the  cold,  Bernardou?"  she  asked 
14 


158  FOLLE-FARINE. 

him  suddenly,  glancing  backward  through  the  lattice  of 
the  Flandrins'  house,  through  which  she  could  see  the 
infants  laughing  and  shaking  the  puppet  with  the  gilded 
bells. 

"  They  beat  me ;  they  say  I  am  naughty,  because  I 
want  gran'mere,"  he  said,  with  a  sob.  "  They  beat  me 
often,  and  oh !  if  she  knew,  she  would  wake  and  come. 
Do  tell  her — do  !  Bernardou  will  be  so  good,  and  never 
vex  her,  if  only  she  will  come  back  !" 

His  piteous  voice  was  drowned  in  tears. 

His  little  life  had  been  hard  ;  scant  fare,  cold  winds, 
and  naked  limbs  had  been  his  portion  ;  yet  the  life  had 
been  bright  and  gleeful  to  him,  clinging  to  his  grandam's 
skirts  as  she  washed  at  the  tub  or  hoed  in  the  cabbage- 
ground,  catching  her  smile  when  be  brought  her  the  first 
<^isy  of  the  year,  running  always  to  her  open  arms  in 
any  hurt,  sinking  to  sleep  always  with  the  singing  of  her 
old  ballads  on  his  ear. 

It  had  been  a  little  life,  dear,  glad,  kindly,  precious  to 
him,  and  he  wept  for  it,  refusing  to  be  comforted  by  sight 
of  a  gilded  puppet  in  another's  hand,  or  a  sugared  Jesus 
in  another's  mouth,  as  they  expected  him  to  be. 

It  is  the  sort  of  comfort  that  is  always  offered  to  the 
homeless,  and  they  are  always  thought  ungrateful  if  they 
will  not  be  consoled  by  it. 

"  I  wish  I  could  take  you,  Bernardou  !"  she  murmured, 
with  a  momentary  softness  that  was  exquisitely  tender 
in  its  contrast  to  her  haughty  and  fierce  temper.  "I 
wish  I  could." 

For  one  wild  instant  the  thought  came  to  her  to  break 
from  her  bonds,  and  take  this  creature  who  was  as  lonely 
as  herself,  and  to  wander  away  and  away  into  that  un- 
known land  which  stretched  around  her,  and  of  which 
she  knew  no  more  than  one  of  the  dark  leaves  knew  that 
grew  in  the  snow-filled  ditch.  But  the  thought  passed 
unuttered :  she  knew  neither  where  to  go  nor  what  to 
do.  Her  few  early  years  in  the  Liebana  were  too  dream- 
like and  too  vaguely  remembered  to  be  any  guide  to  her; 
and  the  world  seemed  only  to  her  in  her  fancies  as  a  vast 
plain,  dreary  and  dismal,  in  which  every  hand  would  be 
against  her,  and  every  living  thing  be  hostile  to  her. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  159 

Besides,  the  long  habitude  of  slavery  was  on  her,  and 
it  is  a  yoke  that  eats  into  the  flesh  too  deeply  to  be 
wrenched  off  without  an  effort. 

As  she  stood  thinking,  with  the  child's  eager  hands 
clasping  her  skirts,  a  shrill  voice  called  from  the  wood- 
stack  and  dung-heap  outside  Flandrin's  house, — 

"  Bef  nardou  !  Bernardou!  thou  little  plague.  Come 
within.  What  dost  do  out  there  in  the  dark?  Mischief, 
I  will  warrant." 

The  speaker  strode  out,  and  snatched  and  bore  and 
clutched  him  away  ;  she  was  the  sister  of  Rose  Flandrin, 
who  lived  with  them,  and  kept  the  place  and  the  children 
in  order. 

"Thou  little  beast!"  she  muttered,  in  fury.  "Dost 
dare  talk  to  the  witch  that  killed  thy  grandmother  ?  Thou 
shalt  hie  to  bed,  and  sup  on  a  fine  whipping.  Thank 
God,  thou  goest  to  the  hospital  to-morrow  1  Thou 
wouldst  bring  a  dire  curse  on  the  house  in  reward  for  our 
alms  to  thee." 

She  dragged  him  in  and  slammed-to  the  door,  and  his 
cries  echoed  above  the  busy  shouts  aud  laughter  of  the 
Flandrin  family,  gathered  about  the  tinseled  Punch  and 
the  sugared  Jesus,  and  the  soup-pot,  that  stewed  them  a 
fat  farm-yard  goose  for  their  supper. 

Folle-Farine  listened  awhile,  with  her  hand  clinched 
on  her  knife ;  then  she  toiled  onward  through  the  village, 
and  left  it  and  its  carols  and  carouses  behind  her  in  the 
red  glow  of  the  sinking  sun. 

She  thought  no  more  of  setting  their  huts  in  a  blaze ; 
the  child's  words  had  touched  and  softened  her,  she  re- 
membered the  long  patient  bitter  life  of  the  woman  who 
had  died  of  cold  and  hunger  in  her  eighty-second  year, 
and  yet  who  had  thus  died  saying  to  the  last,  "  God  is 
good." 

"What  is  their  God?"  she  mused.  "They  care  for 
Him,  and  He  seems  to  care  nothing  for  them  whether  they 
be  old  or  young." 

Yet  her  heart  was  softened,  and  she  would  not  fire  the 
house  in  which  little  Bernardou  was  sheltered. 

His  was  the  first  gratitude  that  she  had  ever  met  with, 
and  it  was  sweet  to  her  as  the  rare  blossom  of  the  edel- 


1G0  FOLLE-FARINE. 

weiss  to  the  traveler  upon  the  highest  Alpine  summits — 
a  flower  full  of  promise,  born  amidst  a  waste. 

The  way  was  long  to  where  Marcdlin  dwelt,  but  she 
walked  on  through  the  fields  that  were  in  summer  all  one 
scarlet  group  of  poppies. 

The  day  was  over,  the  evening  drew  nigh,  the  sound 
of  innumerable  bells  in  the  town  echoed  faintly  from  the 
distance,  over  the  snow :  all  was  still. 

On  the  night  of  the  new  year  the  people  had  a  care 
that  the  cattle  in  the  byres,  the  sheep  in  the  folds,  the 
dogs  in  the  kennels,  the  swine  in  the  styes,  the  old  cart- 
horses in  the  sheds,  should  have  a  full  meal  and  a  clean 
bed,  and  be  able  to  rejoice. 

In  all  the  country  round  there  were  only  two  that  were 
forgotten — the  dead  in  their  graves  and  the  daughter  of 
Taric  the  gypsy. 

Folle-Farine  was  cold,  hungry,  and  exhausted,  for  the 
fever  had  left  her  enfeebled;  and  from  the  coarse  food  of 
the  mill-house  her  weakness  had  turned. 

But  she  walked  on  steadily. 

At  the  hut  where  Marcellin  dwelt  she  knew  that  she 
would  be  sure  of  one  welcome,  one  smile ;  one  voice  that 
would  greet  her  kindly ;  one  face  that  would  look  on  her 
without  a  frown. 

It  would  not  matter,  she  thought,  how  the  winds 
should  howl  and  the  hail  drive,  or  how  the  people  should 
be  merry  in  their  homes  and  forgetful  of  her  and  of  him. 
He  and  she  would  sit  together  over  the  little  fire,  and 
give  back  hate  for  hate  and  scorn  for  scorn,  and  commune 
with  each  other,  and  want  no  other  cheer  or  comrade. 

It  had  been  always  so  since  he  had  first  met  her 
at  sunset  among  the  poppies,  then  a  little  child  eight 
years  old.  Every  new-year's-night  she  had  spent  with 
him  in  his  hovel ;  and  in  their  own  mute  way  they  had 
loved  one  another,  and  drawn  closer  together,  and  been 
almost  glad,  though  often  pitcher  and  platter  had  been 
empty,  and  sometimes  even  the  hearth  had  been  cold. 

She  stepped  bravely  against  the  wind,  and  over  the 
crisp  firm  snow,  her  spirits  rising  as  she  drew  near  the 
only  place  that  had  ever  opened  its  door  gladly  to  her 
coming,  her  heart  growing  lighter  as  she  approached  the 


FOLLE-FARINE.  161 

only  creature  to  whom  she  had  ever  spoken  her  thoughts 
without  derision  or  told  her  woes  without  condemnation. 

His  hut  stood  by  itself  in  the  midst  of  the  wide  pastures 
and  by  the  side  of  a  stream. 

A  little  light  was  wont  to  twinkle  at  that  hour  through 
the  crevices  of  its  wooden  shutter ;  this  evening  all  was 
dark,  the  outline  of  the  hovel  rose  like  a  rugged  mound 
against  the  white  wastes  round  it.  The  only  sound  was 
the  far-off  chiming  of  the  bells  that  vibrated  strangely 
on  the  rarefied  sharp  air. 

She  crossed  the  last  meadow  where  the  sheep  were 
folded  for  the  night,  and  went  to  the  door  and  pushed 
against  it  to  open  it — it  was  locked. 

She  struck  it  with  her  hand. 

"  Open,  Marcellin — open  quickly.     It  is  only  I." 

There  was  no  answer. 

She  smote  the  wood  more  loudly,  and  called  to  him 
again. 

A  heavy  step  echoed  on  the  mud  floor  within ;  a  match 
was  struck,  a  dull  light  glimmered ;  a  voice  she  did  not 
know  muttered  drowsily,  "  Who  is  there  ?" 

**  It  is  I,  Marcellin,"  she  answered.  "  It  is  not  night. 
I  am  come  to  be  an  hour  with  you.  Is  anything  amiss  ?" 

The  door  opened  slowly,  an  old  woman,  whose  face 
was  strange  to  her,  peered  out  into  the  dusk.  She  had 
been  asleep  on  the  settle  by  the  fire,  and  stared  stupidly 
at  the  flame  of  her  own  lamp. 

"  Is  it  the  old  man,  Marcellin,  you  want  ?"  she  asked. 

"  Marcellin,  yes — where  is  he  ?" 

"  He  died  four  days  ago.  Get  you  gone  ;  I  will  have 
no  tramps  about  my  place." 

"Died!" 

Folle-Farine  stood  erect  and  without  a  quiver  in  her 
face  and  in  her  limbs  ;  but  her  teeth  shut  together  like  a 
steel  clasp,  and  all  the  rich  and  golden  hues  of  her  skin 
changed  to  a  sickly  ashen  pallor. 

"Yes,  why  not?"  grumbled  the  old  woman.  "To  be 
sure,  men  said  that  God  would  never  let  him  die,  because 
he  killed  St.  Louis  ;  but  I  myself  never  thought  that.  I 
knew  the  devil  would  not  wait  more  than  a  hundred 
years  for  him — you  can  never  cheat  the  devil,  and  he 

14* 


162  FOLLE-FAKINE. 

always  seems  stronger  than  the  saints — somehow.  You 
are  that  thing  of  Ypres,  are  you  not  ?     Get  you  gone  !" 

"  Who  are  you  ?    Why  are  you  here  ?"  she  gasped. 

Her  right  hand  was  clinched  on  the  door-post,  and  her 
right  foot  was  set  on  the  threshold,  so  that  the  door  could 
not  be  closed. 

"  I  am  an  honest  woman  and  a  pious ;  and  it  befouls 
me  to  dwell  where  he  dwelt,"  the  old  peasant  hissed  in 
loud  indignation.  "  I  stood  out  a  whole  day  ;  but  when 
one  is  poor,  and  the  place  is  offered  quit  of  rent,  what 

can  one  do  ? and  it  is  roomy  and  airy  for  the  fowls, 

and  the  priest  has  flung  holy  water  about  it  and  purified 
it,  and  I  have  a  Horseshoe  nailed  up  and  a  St.  John  in 
the  corner.  But  be  off  with  you,  and  take  your  foot 
from  my  door  !" 

Folle-Farine  stood  motionless. 

"  When  did  he  die,  and  how  ?"  she  asked  in  her  teeth. 

"  He  was  found  dead  on  the  road,  on  his  heap  of  stones, 
the  fourth  night  from  this,"  answered  the  old  woman, 
loving  to  hear  her  own  tongue,  yet  dreading  the  one  to 
whom  she  spoke.  "  Perhaps  he  had  been  hungered,  I  do 
not  know;  or  more  likely  the  devil  would  not  wait  any 
longer — anyways  he  was  dead,  the  hammer  in  his  hand. 
Max  Lieben,  the  man  that  travels  with  the  wooden  clocks, 
found  him.  He  lay  there  all  night.  Nobody  would  touch 
him.  They  say  they  saw  the  mark  of  the  devil's  claws 
on  him.  At  last  they  got  a  dung-cart,  and  that  took  him 
away  before  the  sun  rose.  He  died  just  under  the  great 
Calvary — it  was  like  his  blasphemy.  They  have  put  him 
in  the  common  ditch.  I  think  it  shame  to  let  the  man 
that  slew  a  saint  be  in  the  same  grave  with  all  the  poor 
honest  folk  who  feared  God,  and  were  Christians,  though 
they  might  be  beggars  and  outcasts.  Get  you  gone,  you 
be  as  vile  as  he.  If  you  want  him,  go  ask  your  father 
the  foul  fiend  for  him — they  are  surely  together  now." 

And  she  drove  the  door  to,  and  closed  it,  and  barred  it 
firmly  within. 

"Not  but  what  the  devil  can  get  through  the  chinks," 
she  muttered,  as  she  turned  the  wick  of  her  lamp  up 
higher. 

Folle-Farine  went  back  over  the  snow;  blind,  sick, 


FOLLE-FARINE.  163 

feeling  her  way  through  the  twilight  as  though  it  were 
the  darkness  of  night. 

"  He  died  alone — he  died  alone,"  she  muttered,  a 
thousand  times,  as  she  crept  shivering  through  the  gloom  ; 
and  she  knew  that  now  her  own  fate  was  yet  more 
desolate.  She  knew  that  now  she  lived  alone  without 
one  friend  on  earth. 

The  death  on  the  open  highway ;  the  numbness,  and 
stillness,  and  deafness  to  all  the  maledictions  of  men. 

The  shameful  bier  made  at  night  on  the  dung-cart, 
amidst  loathing  glances  and  muttered  curses  ;  the  name- 
less grave  in  the  common  ditch  with  the  beggar,  the  thief, 
the  harlot,  and  the  murderer, — these  which  were  so  awful 
to  all  others  seemed  to  her  as  sweet  as  to  sink  to  sleep  on 
soft  unshorn  grass,  whilst  rose-leaves  were  shaken  in  the 
wind,  and  fell  as  gently  as  kisses  upon  the  slumberer. 

For  even  those  at  least  were  rest.  And  she  in  her 
youth  and  in  her  strength,  and  in  the  blossom  of  her 
beauty,  gorgeous  as  a  passion-flower  in  the  sun,  envied 
bitterly  the  old  man  who  bad  died  at  his  work  on  the 
public  road,  hated  by  his  kind,  weighted  with  the  burden 
of  nigh  a  hundred  years. 

For  his  death  was  not  more  utterly  lonely  and  desolate 
than  was  her  life  ;  and  to  all  taunts  and  to  all  curses  the 
ears  of  the  dead  are  deaf. 


BOOK    III. 


CHAPTER    I. 


Night  had  come;  a  dark  night  of  earliest  spring. 
The  wild  day  had  sobbed  itself  to  sleep  after  a  restless 
life  with  fitfu^  breaths  of  storm  and  many  sighs  of  shud- 
dering breezes. 

The  sun  had  sunk,  leaving  long  tracks  of  blood-red 
light  across  one-half  the  heavens. 

There  was  a  sharp  crisp  coldness  as  of  lingering  frost 
in  the  gloom  and  the  dullness.  Heavy  clouds,  as  yet  un- 
broken, hung  over  the  cathedral  and  the  clustering  roofs 
around  it  in  dark  and  starless  splendor. 

Over  the  great  still  plains  which  stretched  eastward 
and  southward,  black  with  the  furrows  of  the  scarce- 
budded  corn,  the  wind  blew  hard;  blowing  the  river 
and  the  many  streamlets  spreading  from  it  into  foam  ; 
driving  the  wintry  leaves  which  still  strewed  the  earth 
thickly  hither  and  thither  in  legions ;  breaking  boughs 
that  had  weathered  through  the  winter  hurricanes,  and 
scattering  the  tender  blossoms  of  the  snowdrops  and  the 
earliest  crocuses  in  all  the  little  moss-grown  garden-ways. 

The  smell  of  wet  grass,  of  the  wood-born  violets,  of 
trees  whose  new  life  was  waking  in  their  veins,  of  damp 
earths  turned  freshly  upwards  by  the  plow,  were  all 
blown  together  by  the  riotous  breezes. 

Now  and  then  a  light  gleamed   through  the  gloom 

where  a  little  peasant  boy  lighted   home  with  a  torch 

some  old  priest  on  his  mule,  or  a  boat  went  down  the 

waters  with  a  lamp  hung  at  its  prow.     For  it  grew  dark 

(164) 


FOLLE-FARINE.  165 

early,  and  people  used  to  the  river  read  a  threat  of  a  flood 
on  its  face. 

A  dim  glow  from  the  west,  which  was  still  tinged 
with  the  fire  of  the  sunset,  fell  through  a  great  square 
window  set  in  a  stone  building,  and,  striking  across  the 
sicklier  rays  of  an  oil  lajnp,  reached  the  opposing  wall 
within. 

It  was  a  wall  of  gray  stone,  dead  and  lusterless  like 
the  wall  of  a  prison-house,  over  whose  surface  a  spider 
as  colorless  as  itself  dragged  slowly  its  crooked  hairy 
limbs  loaded  with  the  moisture  of  the  place ;  an  old 
tower,  of  which  the  country-folk  told  strange  tales  where 
it  stood  among  the  rushes  on  the  left  bank  of  the  stream. 

A  man  watched  the  spider  as  it  went. 

It  crept  on  its  heavy  way  across  the  faint  crimson  re- 
flection from  the  glow  of  the  sunken  sun. 

It  was  fat,  well  nourished,  lazy,  content ;  its  home  of 
dusky  silver  hung  on  high,  where  its  pleasure  lay  in 
weaving,  clinging,  hoarding,  breeding.  It  lived  in  the 
dark ;  it  had  neither  pity  nor  regret ;  it  troubled  itself 
neither  for  the  death  it  dealt  to  nourish  itself,  nor  for  the 
light  without,  into  which  it  never  wandered  j  it  spun  and 
throve  and  multiplied. 

It  was  an  emblem  of  the  man  who  is  wise  in  his  genera- 
tion ;  of  the  man  whom  Cato  the  elder  deemed  divine ; 
of  the  Majority  and  the  Mediocrity  who  rule  over  the 
earth  and  enjoy  its  fruits. 

This  man  knew  that  it  was  wise  ;  that  those  who  were 
like  to  it  were  wise  also :  wise  with  the  only  wisdom 
which  is  honored  of  other  men. 

He  had  been  unwise — always;  and  therefore  he  stood, 
watching  the  sun  die,  with  hunger  in  his  soul,  with 
famine  in  his  body. 

For  many  months  he  had  been  half  famished,  as  were 
the  wolves  in  his  own  northern  mountains  in  the  winter 
solstice.  For  seven  days  he  had  only  been  able  to  crush 
a  crust  of  hard  black  bread  between  his  teeth.  For 
twenty  hours  he  had  not  done  even  so  much  as  this. 
The  trencher  in  his  trestle  was  empty ;  and  he  had  not 
wherewithal  to  refill  it. 

He  might  have  found  some  to  fill  it  for  him,  no  doubt. 


166  FOLLE-FARINE. 

He  lived  amidst  the  poor,  and  the  poor  to  the  poor  are 
good,  though  they  are  bad  and  bitter  to  the  rich. 

But  he  did  not  open  either  his  lips  or  his  hand.  He 
consumed  his  heart  in  silence  ;  and  his  vitals  preyed  in 
anguish  on  themselves  without  his  yielding  to  their  tor- 
ments. 

He  was  a  madman  ;  and  Cato,  who  measured  the  god- 
liness of  men  by  what  they  gained,  would  have  held  him 
accursed — the  madness  that  starves  and  is  sileut  for  an 
idea  is  an  insanity,  scouted  by  the  world  and  the  gods. 
For  it  is  an  insanity  unfruitful,  except  to  the  future.  And 
for  the  future  who  cares, — save  the  madmen  themselves  ? 

He  watched  the  spider  as  it  went. 

It  could  not  speak  to  him  as  its  fellow  once  spoke  in 
the  old  Scottish  story.  To  hear  as  that  captive  heard, 
the  hearer  must  have  hope,  and  a  kingdom — if  only  in 
dreams. 

This  man  had  no  hope;  he  had  a  kingdom,  indeed, 
but  it  was  not  of  earth  ;  and  in  an  hour  of  sheer  cruel 
bodily  pain  earth  alone  has  dominion  and  power  and 
worth. 

The  spider  crawled  across  the  gray  wall ;  across  the 
glow  from  the  vanished  sun  ;  across  a  coil  of  a  dead 
passion-vine  that  strayed  over  the  floor,  across  the  classic 
shape  of  a  great  cartoon  drawn  in  chalks  upon  the  dull 
rugged  surface  of  stone. 

Nothing  arrested  it;  nothing  retarded  it,  as  nothing 
hastened  it. 

It  moved  slowly  on  ;  fat,  lusterless,  indolent,  hueless ; 
reached  at  length  its  den,  and  there  squatted  aloft,  loving 
the  darkness;  its  young  swarming  around,  its  netted  prey 
held  in  its  forceps,  its  nets  cast  about." 

Through  the  open  casement  there  came  in  on  the  rising 
wind  of  the  storm,  in  the  light  of  the  last  lingering  sun- 
beam, a  beautiful  night-moth,  begotten  by  some  cruel 
hot-house  heat  in  the  bosom  of  some  frail  exiled  tropic 
flower. 

It  swam  in  on  trembling  pinions,  and  lit  on  the  golden 
head  of  a  gathered  crocus  that  lay  dying  on  the  stones — 
a  moth  that  should  have  been  born  to  no  world  save  that 
of  the  summer  world  of  a  Midsummer  Night's  Dream. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  167 

A  shape  of  Ariel  and  Oberon  ;  slender,  silver,  purple, 
roseate,  lustrous-eyed  and  gossamer-winged. 

A  creature  of  woodland  waters  and  blossoming  forests ; 
of  the  yellow  chalices  of  kingcups  and  the  white  breasts 
of  river  lilies,  of  moonbeams  that  strayed  through  a 
summer  world  of  shadows,  and  dewdrops  that  glistened 
in  the  deep-folded  hearts  of  roses.  A  creature  to  brush 
the  dreaming  eyes  of  a  poet,  to  nestle  on  the  bosom  of  a 
young  girl  sleeping  :  to  float  earthwards  on  a  falliug  star, 
to  slumber  on  a  lotos-leaf. 

A  creature  that,  amidst  the  still  soft  hush  of  woods  and 
waters,  tells  to  those  who  listen,  of  the  world  when  the 
world  was  young. 

The  moth  flew  on,  and  poised  on  the  fading  crocus- 
leaves  which  spread  out  their  pale  gold  on  the  level  of 
the  floor. 

It  was  weary,  and  its  delicate  wings  drooped  ;  it  was 
storm-tossed,  wind-beaten,  drenched  with  mist  and  frozen 
with  the  cold ;  it  belonged  to  the  moon,  to  the  dew,  to 
the  lilies,  to  the  forget-me-nots,  and  the  night ;  and  it 
found  that  the  hard  grip  of  winter  had  seized  it  whilst 
yet  it  had  thought  that  the  stars  and  the  summer  were 
with  it. 

It  lived  before  its  time, — and  it  was  like  the  human 
soul,  which,  being  born  in  the  darkness  of  the  world 
dares  to  dream  of  light,  and  wandering  in  vain  search  of 
a  sun  that  will  never  rise,  falls  and  perishes  in  wretched- 
ness. 

It  was  beautiful  exceedingly  ;  with  the  brilliant  tropi- 
cal beauty  of  a  life  that  is  short-lived.  It  rested  a  moment 
on  the  stem  of  the  pale  flower,  then  with  its  radiant  eyes 
fastened  on  the  point  of  light  which  the  lamp  thrust 
upward,  it  flew  on  high,  spreading  out  its  transparent 
wings,  and  floating  to  the  flame,  kissed  it,  quivered  once, 
and  died. 

There  fell  among  the  dust  and  cinder  of  the  lamp  a 
little  heap  of  shrunken  fire-scorched  blackened  ashes. 

The  wind  whirled  them  upward  from  their  rest,  and 
drove  them  forth  into  the  night  to  mingle  with  the  storm- 
scourged  grasses,  the  pale,  dead  violets,  the  withered 
snow-flowers,  with  all  things  frost- touched  and  forgotten. 


168  FOLLE-FARINE. 

The  spider  sat  aloft,  sucking  the  juices  from  the  fet- 
tered flies,  teaching  its  spawn  to  prey  and  feed ;  content 
in  squalor  and  in  plenitude ;  in  sensual  sloth,  and  in  the 
increase  of  its  spawn  and  of  its  hoard. 

He  watched  them  both :  the  success  of  the  spider,  the 
death  of  the  moth.  Trite  as  a  fable  ;  ever  repeated  as  the 
tides  of  the  sea  ;  the  two  symbols  of  humanity  ;  of  the 
life  which  fattens  on  greed  and  gain,  and  the  life  which 
perishes  of  divine  desire. 

Then  he  turned  and  looked  at  the  cartoons  upon  the 
wall ;  shapes  grand  and  dim,  the  children  of  his  genius, 
a  genius  denied  by  men. 

His  head  sank  on  his  chest,  his  hand  tore  the  shirt 
away  from  his  breast,  which  the  pangs  of  a  bodily  hunger 
that"  he  scorned  devoured  indeed,  but  which  throbbed 
with  a  pain  more  bitter  than  that  of  even  this  lingering 
and  ignoble  death.  He  had  genius  in  him,  and  he  had  to 
die  like  a  wolf  on  the  Armorican  wolds  yonder  westward, 
when  the  snows  of  winter  hid  all  offal  from  its  fangs. 

It  was  horrible. 

He  had  to  die  for  want  of  the  crust  that  beggars 
gnawed  in  the  kennels  of  the  city ;  he  had  to  die  of  the 
lowest  and  commonest  need  of  all — the  sheer  animal  need 
of  food.  "  J'avais  quelque  chose  Id!"  was,  perhaps,  the 
most  terrible  of  all  those  deatlr-cries  of  despair  which  the 
guillotine  of  Thermidor  wrung  from  the  lips  of  the  con- 
demned. For  it  was  the  despair  of  the  bodily  life  for  the 
life  of  the  mind  which  died  with  it. 

When  the  man  clings  to  life  for  life's  sake,  because  it  is 
fair  and  sweet,  and  good  to  the  sight  and  the  senses,  there 
may  be  weakness  in  his  shudder  at  its  threatening  loss. 
But  when  a  man  is  loth  to  leave  life,  although  it  be  hard, 
and  joyless,  and  barren  of  all  delights,  because  life  gives 
him  power  to  accomplish  things  greater  than  he,  which 
yet  without  him  must  perish,  there  is  the  strength  in  him 
as  there  is  the  agony  of  Prometheus. 

With  him  it  must  die  also:  that  deep  dim  greatness 
within  him  which  moves  him,  despite  himself;  that  name- 
less unspeakable  force,  which  compels  him  to  create  and 
to  achieve ;  that  vision  by  which  he  beholds  worlds  be- 
yond him  not  seen  by  his  fellows. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  169 

Weary  of  life  indeed  he  may  be ;  of  life  material,  and 
full  of  subtlety,  of  passion,  of  pleasure,  of  pain  ;  of  the 
kisses  that  burn,  of  the  laughs  that  ring  hollow,  of  the 
honey  that  so  soon  turns  to  gall,  of  the  sickly  fatigues 
and  the  tired  cloyed  hunger  that  are  the  portion  of  men 
upon  earth. 

Weary  of  these  he  may  be  ;  but  still  if  the  gods  have 
breathed  on  him  and  made  him  mad,  with  the  madness 
that  men  have  called  genius,  there  will  be  that  in  him 
greater  than  himself,  which  he  knows — and  cannot  know 
without  some  fierce  wrench  and  pang — will  be  numbed 
and  made  impotent,  and  drift  away,  lost  for  evermore, 
into  that  eternal  Night  which  is  all  that  men  behold  of 
death. 

It  was  so  with  this  man  now. 

Life  was  barren  for  him  of  all  delight,  full  of  privation, 
of  famine,  of  obscurity,  of  fruitless  travail  and  of  vain  de- 
sire ;  and  yet  because  he  believed  that  he  had  it  in  him 
to  be  great,  or  rather  because,  with  a  purer  and  more  im- 
personal knowledge,  he  believed  that  it  was  within  his 
power  to  do  that  which  when  done  the  world  would  not 
willingly  let  die;  it  was  loathsome  to  him  to  perish  thus 
of  the  sheer  lack  of  food,  as  any  toothless  snake  would 
perish  in  its  swamp. 

He  stood  opposite  to  the  great  white  cartoons  on  which 
his  soul  had  spent  itself;  creations  which  looked  vague 
and  ghostly  in  the  shadows  of  the  chamber,  but  in  which 
he  saw,  or  at  the  least  believed  he  saw,  the  title-deeds  of 
his  own  heirship  to  the  world's  kingdom  of  fame. 

For  himself  he  cared  nothing  ;  but  for  them,  he  smiled 
a  little  bitterly  as  he  looked : 

"  They  will  light  some  bake-house  fire  to  pay  those 
that  may  throw  my  body  in  a  ditch,"  he  thought. 

And  yet  the  old  passion  had  so  much  dominance  still 
that  he  instinctively  went  nearer  to  his  latest  and  best- 
loved  creations,  and  took  the  white  chalks  up  and  worked 
once  more  by  the  dull  sullen  rays  of  the  lamp  behind 
him. 

They  would  be  torn  down  on  the  morrow  and  thrust 
for  fuel  into  some  housewife's  kitchen-stove. 

15 


170  FOLLE-FAR1NE. 

What  matter  ? 

He  loved  them ;  they  were  his  sole  garniture  and  treas- 
ure ;  in  them  his  soul  had  gathered  all  its  dreams  and  all 
its  pure  delights :  so  long  as  his  sight  lasted  he  sought  to 
feed  it  on  them  ;  so  long  as  his  hand  had  power  he  strove 
to  touch,  to  caress,  to  enrich  them. 

Even  in  such  an  hour  as  this,  the  old  sweet  trance  of 
Art  was  upon  him. 

He  was  devoured  by  the  deadly  fangs  of  long  fast ; 
streaks  of  living  fire  seemed  to  scorch  his  entrails  ;  his 
throat  and  lungs  were  parched  and  choked ;  and  ever  and 
again  his  left  hand  clinched  on  the  bones  of  his  naked 
chest  as  though  he»could  wrench  away  the  throes  that 
gnawed  it. 

He  knew  that  worse  than  this  would  follow ;  he  knew 
that  tenfold  more  torment  would  await  him;  that  limbs 
as  strong,  and  muscles  as  hard,  and  manhood  as  vigorous 
as  his,  would  only  yield  to  such  death  as  this  slowly, 
doggedly,  inch  by  inch,  day  by  day. 

He  knew ;  and  he  knew  that  he  could  not  trust  himself 
to  go  through  that  uttermost  torture  without  once  lifting 
his  voice  to  summon  the  shame  of  release  from  it. 
Shame,  since  release  would  need  be  charity. 

He  knew  full  well ;  he  had  seen  all  forms  of  death  ;  he 
had  studied  its  throes,  and  portrayed  its  horrors.  He 
knew  that  before  dawn — it  might  be  before  midnight — 
this  agony  would  grow  so  great  that  it  would  conquer 
him ;  and  that  to  save  himself  from  the  cowardice  of  ap- 
peal, the  shame  of  besought  alms,  he  would  have  to  use 
his  last  powers  to  drive  home  a  knife  hard  and  sure 
through  his  breast-bone. 

Yet  he  stood  there,  almost  forgetting  this,  scarcely 
conscious  of  any  other  thing  than  of  the  passion  that 
ruled  him. 

Some  soft  curve  in  a  girl's  bare  bosom,  some  round 
smooth  arm  of  a  sleeping  woman,  some  fringe  of  leaves 
against  a  moonlit  sky,  some  broad-winged  bird  sailing 
through  shadows  of  the  air,  some  full-orbed  lion  rising  to 
leap  on  the  nude  soft  indolently-folded  limbs  of  a  dream- 
ing virgin,  palm-shadowed  in  the  East; — all  these  he 
gazed  on  and  touched,  and  looked  again,  and  changed  by 


FO  L  L  E-  FA  ETNE.  \*\\ 

some  mere  inward  curve  or  deepened  line  of  his  chalk 
stylus. 

All  these  usurped  him  ;  appealed  to  him  ;  were  well 
beloved  and  infinitely  sad;  seemed  ever  in  their  white- 
ness and  their  loneliness  to  cry  to  him, — "Whither  dost 
thou  go  ?  Wilt  thou  leave  us  alone?" 

And  as  he  stood,  and  thus  caressed  them  with  his  eyes 
and  touch,  and  wrestled  with  the  inward  torment  which 
grew  greater  and  greater  as  the  night  approached,  the 
sudden  sickly  feebleness  of  long  hunger  came  upon  him ; 
the  gravelike  coldness  of  his  tireless  chamber  slackened 
and  numbed  the  flowing  of  his  veins ;  his  brain  grew 
dull  and  all  its  memory  ceased,  confused  and  blotted.  He 
staggered  once,  wondering  dimly  and  idly  as  men  won- 
der in  delirium,  if  this  indeed  were  death :  then  he  fell 
backwards  senseless  on  his  hearth. 

The  last  glow  of  day  died  off  the  wall.  The  wind  rose 
louder,  driving  in  through  the  open  casement  a  herd  of 
withered  leaves.  An  owl  flew  by,  uttering  weary  cries 
against  the  storm. 

On  high  the  spider  sat,  sucking  the  vitals  of  its  prey, 
safe  in  its  filth  and  darkness ;  looking  down  ever  on  the 
lifeless  body  on  the  hearth,  and  saying  in  its  heart, — 
"Thou  Fool!" 


CHAPTER    II. 


As  the  night  fell,  Folle-Farine,  alone,  steered  herself 
down  the  water  through  the  heart  of  the  town,  where 
the  buildings  were  oldest,  and  where  on  either  side  there 
loomed,  through  the  dusk,  carved  on  the  black  timbers, 
strange  masks  of  satyr  and  of  faun,  of  dragon  and  of 
griffin,  of  fiend  and  of  martyr. 

She  sat  in  the  clumsy  empty  market-boat,  guiding  the 
tiller-rope  with  her  foot. 

The  sea  flowing  in  stormily  upon  the  coast  sent  the 
tide  of  the  river  inland  with  a  swift  impetuous  current, 
to  which  its  sluggish  depths  were  seldom  stirred.     The 


1 7  2  FOLLE-FA  RINE. 

oars  rested  unused  in  the  bottom  of  the  boat ;  she  glided 
down  the  stream  without  exertion  of  her  own,  quietly, 
easily,  dreamily. 

She  had  come  from  a  long  day's  work,  lading  and  un- 
lading timber  and  grain  for  her  taskmaster  and  his  fellow- 
farmers,  at  the  river  wharf  at  the  back  of  the  town, 
where  the  little  sea-trawlers  and  traders,  with  their  fresh 
salt  smell  and  their  brown  sails  crisp  from  fierce  sea- 
winds,  gathered  for  traffic  with  the  corn-barges  and  the 
eg^g-boats  of  the  land. 

Her  day's  labor  was  done,  and  she  was  repaid  for  it  by 
the  free  effortless  backward  passage  home  through  the 
shadows  of  the  water-streets;  where  in  the  overhanging 
buildings,  ever  and  anon,  some  lantern  swinging  on  a 
cord  from  side  to  side,  or  some  open  casement  arched 
above  a  gallery,  showed  the  dark  sad  wistful  face  of  some 
old  creature  kneeling  in  prayer  before  a  crucifix,  or  the 
gold  ear-rings  of  some  laughing  girl  leaning  down  with 
the  first  frail  violets  of  the  year  fragrant  in  her  boddice. 

The  cold  night  had  brought  the  glow  of  wood-fires  in 
many  of  the  dwellings  of  that  poor  and  picturesque 
quarter;  and  showed  many  a  homely  interior  through 
the  panes  of  the  oriel  and  lancet  windows,  over  which 
brooded  sculptured  figures  seraph-winged,  or  carven  forms 
helmeted  and  leaning  on  their  swords. 

In  one  of  them  there  was  a  group  of  young  men  and 
maidens  gathered  round  the  wood  at  nut-burning,  the 
lovers  seeking  each  other's  kiss  as  the  kernels  broke  the 
shells ;  in  another,  some  rosy  curly  children  played  at 
soldiers  with  the  cuirass  and  saber  which  their  grandsire 
had  worn  in  the  army  of  the  empire ;  in  another,  before 
a  quaint  oval  old-fashioned  glass,  a  young  girl  all  alone 
made  trial  of  her  wedding-wreath  upon  her  fair  forehead, 
and  smiled  back  on  her  own  image  with  a  little  joyous 
laugh  that  ended  in  a  sob ;  in  another,  a  young  bearded 
workman  carved  ivory  beside  his  hearth,  whilst  his  old 
mother  sat  knitting  in  a  high  oak  chair ;  in  another,  a 
Sister  of  Charity,  with  a  fair  Madonna's  face,  bent  above 
a  little  pot  of  home-bred  snowdrops,  with  her  tears  drop- 
ping on  the  white  heads  of  the  flowers,  whilst  the  sick 
man,  whom  she  had  charge  of,  slept  and  left  her  a  brief 


FOLLE^ARINE.  173 

space  for  her  own  memories,  her  own  pangs,  her  own 
sickness,  which  was  only  of  the  heart, — only — and  there- 
fore hopeless. 

All  these  Folle-Farine  saw,  going  onward  in  the  boat 
on  the  gloom  of  the  water  below. 

She  did  not  envy  them  ;  she  rather,  with  her  hatred  of 
them,  scorned  them.  She  had  been  freeborn,  though  now 
she  was  a  slave ;  the  pleasures  of  the  home  and  hearth 
she  envied  no  more  than  she  envied  the  imprisoned  bird 
its  seed  and  water,  its  mate  and  song,  within  the  close 
cage  bars. 

Yet  they  had  a  sort  of  fascination  for  her.  She  wondered 
how  they  felt,  these  people  who  smiled  and  span,  and  ate 
and  drank,  and  sorrowed  and  enjoyed,  and  were  in  health 
and  disease,  at  feast  and  at  funeral,  always  together,  always 
bound  in  one  bond  of  a  common  humanity;  these  people, 
whose  god  on  the  cross  never  answered  them ;  who  were 
poor,  she  knew ;  who  toiled  early  and  late  ;  who  were 
heavily  taxed ;  who  fared  hardly  and  scantily,  yet  who 
for  the  main  part  contrived  to  be  mirthful  and  content, 
and  to  find  some  sunshine  in  their  darkened  hours,  and  to 
cling  to  one  another,  and  in  a  way  be  glad. 

Just  above  her  was  the  corner  window  of  a  very 
ancient  house,  crusted  with  blazonries  and  carvings.  It 
had  been  a  prince  bishop's  palace ;  it  was  now  the  shared 
shelter  of  half  a  score  of  lace-weavers  and  of  ivory- 
workers,  each  family  in  their  chamber,  like  a  bee  in  its 
cell. 

As  the  boat  floated  under  one  of  the  casements,  she 
saw  that  it  stood  open ;  there  was  a  china  cup  filled  with 
house-born  primroses  on  the  broad  sill ;  there  was  an 
antique  illuminated  Book  of  Hours  lying  open  beside  the 
flowers  ;  there  was  a  strong  fire-light  shining  from  within  ; 
there  was  an  old  woman  asleep  and  smiling  in  her  dreams 
beside  the  hearth ;  by  the  open  book  was  a  girl,  leaning 
out  into  the  chill  damp  night,  and  looking  down  the  street 
as  though  in  search  for  some  expected  and  thrice-welcome 
guest. 

She  was  fair  to  look  at,  with  dark  hair  twisted  under 
her  towering  white  cap,  and  a  peachlike  cheek  and 
throat,  and  her  arms  folded  against  her  blue  kerchief 

15* 


174  FOLLE-^ARINE. 

crossed  upon  her  chest.  Into  the  chamber,  unseen  by 
her,  a  young  man  came  and  stole  across  the  shadows, 
and  came  unheard  behind  her  and  bent  his  head  to  hers 
and  kissed  her  ere  she  knew  that  he  was  there.  She 
started  with  a  little  happy  cry  and  pushed  him  away 
with  pretty  provocation  ;  he  drew  her  into  his  arms  and 
into  the  chamber,  and  shut  to  the  lattice,  and  left  only  a 
dusky  reflection  from  within  shining  through  the  panes 
made  dark  by  age  and  dust. 

Folle-Farine  had  watched  them ;  as  the  window  closed 
her  head  dropped,  she  was  stirred  with  a  vague,  passion- 
ate, contemptuous  wonder:  what  was  this  love  that  was 
about  her  everywhere,  and  yet  with  which  she  had  no 
share  ?  She  only  thought  of  it  with  haughtiest  scorn  ; 
and  yet 

There  had  come  a  great  darkness  on  the  river,  a  fierce 
roughness  in  the  wind  ;  the  shutters  were  now  closed  in 
many  of  the  houses  of  the  water-street,  and  their  long 
black  shadows  fell  across  the  depth  that  severed  them, 
and  met  and  blended  in  the  twilight.  The  close  of  this 
day  was  stormy;  the  wind  blew  the  river  swiftly,  and 
the  heavy  raw  mists  were  setting  in  from  the  sea  as  the 
night  descended. 

She  did  not  heed  these ;  she  liked  the  wild  weather 
best;  she  loved  the  rush  of  a  chill  wind  among  her  hair, 
and  the  moisture  of  blown  spray  upon  her  face ;  she  loved 
the  manifold  fantasies  of  the  clouds,  and  the  melodies 
of  the  blast  coming  over  the  sands  and  the  rushes.  She 
loved  the  swirl  and  rage  of  the  angry  water,  and  the 
solitude  that  closed  in  round  her  with  the  darkness. 

The  boat  passed  onward  through  the  now  silent  town  ; 
only  in  one  other  place  a  light  glowed  through  the  un- 
shuttered lattices  that  were  ruddy  with  light  and  enir 
blematic  with  the  paintings  of  the  Renaissance.  It  was 
the  window  of  the  gardener's  wife. 

At  that  season  there  could  bloom  neither  saxifrage  nor 
nasturtium  ;  but  some  green-leaved  winter  shrub  with 
rosy-laden  berries  had  replaced  them,  and  made  a  shining 
frame  all  round  the  painted  panes. 

The  fair  woman  was  within  ;  her  delicate  head  rose  out 
of  the  brown  shadows  round,  with  a  lamp  burning  above 


FOLLE-FARINE.  175 

it  and  a  little  oval  mirror  before.  Into  the  mirror  she 
was  gazing  with  a  smile,  whilst  with  both  hands  about 
her  throat  she  clasped  some  strings  of  polished  shells 
brought  to  her  from  the  sea. 

"How  White  and  how  warm  and  how  glad  she  is!" 
thought  Folle-Farine,  looking  upward ;  and  she  rowed  in 
the  gloom  through  the  sluggish  water  with  envy  at  her 
heart. 

She  was  growing  harder,  wilder,  worse,  with  every 
day;  more  and  more  like  some  dumb,  fierce  forest  beast, 
that  flees  from  every  step  and  hates  the  sound  of  every 
voice.  Since  the  night  that  they  had  pricked  her  for  a 
witch,  the  people  had  been  more  cruel  to  her  than  ever. 
They  cast  bitter  names  at  her  as  she  went  by;  they 
hissed  and  hooted  her  as  she  took  her  mule  through 
their  villages,  or  passed  them  on  the  road  with  her  back 
bent  under  some  load  of  fagots  or  of  winter  wood.  Once 
or  twice  they  stoned  her,  and  chance  alone  had  saved  her 
from  injury. 

For  it  was  an  article  of  faith  in  all  the  hamlets  round 
that  she  had  killed  old  Manon  Dax.  The  Flandrins  said 
so,  and  they  were  good  pious  people  who  would  not  lie. 
Every  dusky  evening  when  the  peasantry,  through  the 
doors  of  their  cabins,  saw  the  gleam  of  her  red  girdle  and 
the  flash  of  her  hawk's  eyes,  where  she  plodded  on  through 
the  mist  on  her  tyrant's  errands,  they  crossed  themselves, 
and  told  each  other  for  the  hundredth  time  the  tale  of  her 
iniquities  over  their  pan  of  smoking  chestnuts. 

It  had  hardened  her  tenfold ;  it  had  made  her  brood  on 
sullen  dreams  of  a  desperate  vengeance.  Marcellin,  too, 
was  gone  ;  his  body  had  been  eaten  by  the  quicklime  in 
the  common  ditch,  and  there  was  not  even  a  voice  so 
stern  as  his  to  bid  her  a  good-morrow.  He  had  been  a 
harsh  man,  of  dark  repute  and  bitter  tongue  ;  but  in  his 
way  he  had  loved  her;  in  his  way,  with  the  eloquence 
that  had  remained  to  him,  and  by  the  strange  stories  that 
he  had  told  her  of  that  wondrous  time  wherein  his  youth 
had  passed,  when  men  had  been  as  gods  and  giants,  and 
women  horrible  as  Medea,  or  sublime  as  Iphigenia,  he 
had  done  something  to  awaken  her  mind,  to  arouse  her 
hopes,  to  lift  her  up  from  the  torpor  of  toil,  the  lusts  of 


IT  6  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

hatred,  the  ruinous  apathy  of  despair.  But  he  was  dead, 
and  she  was  alone,  and  abandoned  utterly  to  herself. 

She  mourned  for  him  with  a  passionate  pain  that  was 
all  the  more  despairing,  because  no  sound  of  it  could  ever 
pass  her  lips  to  any  creature. 

To  and  fro  continually  she  went  by  the  road  on  which 
he  had  died  alone ;  by  the  heap  of  broken  stones,  by  the 
wooden  crucifix,  by  the  high  hedge  and  the  cornlands 
beyond.  Every  time  she  went  the  blood  beat  in  her 
brain,  the  tears  swelled  in  her  throat.  She  hated  with  a 
hatred  that  consumed  her,  and  was  ready  to  ripen  into 
any  deadly  deed,  the  people  who  had  shunned  him  in  his 
life,  and  in  his  death  derided  and  insulted  him,  and  given 
him  such  burial  as  they  gave  the  rotten  carcass  of  some 
noxious  beast. 

Her  heart  was  ripe  for  any  evil  that  should  have  prom- 
ised her  vengeance  ;  a  dull,  cold  sense  of  utter  desolation 
and  isolation  was  always  on  her.  The  injustice  of  the 
people  began  to  turn  her  blood  to  gall,  her  courage  into 
cruelty ;  there  began  to  come  upon  her  the  look  of  those 
who  brood  upon  a  crime. 

It  was,  in  truth,  but  the  despairing  desire  to  live  that 
stirred  within  her ;  to  know,  to  feel,  to  roam,  to  enjoy,  to 
suffer  still,  if  need  be  ;  but  to  suffer  something  else  than 
the  endless  toil  of  the  field-ox  and  tow-horse, — something 
else  than  the  unavenged  blow  that  pays  the  ass  and  the 
dog  for  their  services. 

The  desire  to  be  free  grew  upon  her  with  all  the  force 
and  fury  inherited  from  her  father's  tameless  and  ever- 
wandering  race  ;  if  a  crime  could  have  made  her  free  she 
would  have  seized  it. 

She  was  in  the  prison  of  a  narrow  and  hated  fate ;  and 
from  it  she  looked  out  on  the  desert  of  an  endless  hate, 
which  stretched  around  her  without  one  blossom  of  love, 
one  well  spring  of  charity,  rising  in  its  deathlike  waste. 

The  dreamy  imaginations,  the  fantastic  pictures,  that 
had  been  so  strong  in  her  in  her  early  years,  were  still 
there,  though  distorted  by  ignorance  and  inflamed  by  de- 
spair. Though,  in  her  first  poignant  grief  for  him,  she 
had  envied  Marcellin  his  hard-won  rest,  his  grave  in  the 
public  ditch  of  the  town,  it  was  not  in  her  to  desire  to 


FOLLE-FARINE.  177 

die.  She  was  too  young,  too  strong",  too  restless,  too 
impatient,  and  her  blood  of  the  desert  and  the  forest  was 
too  hot. 

What  she  wanted  was  to  live.  Live  as  the  great 
moor-bird  did  that  she  had  seen  float  one  day  over 
these  pale,  pure,  blue  skies,  with  its  mighty  wings  out- 
stretched in  the  calm  gray  weather;  which  came  none 
knew  whence,  and  which  went  none  knew  whither; 
which  poised  silent  and  stirless  against  the  clouds  ;  then 
called  with  a  sweet  wild  love-note  to  its  mate,  and  waited 
for  him  as  he  sailed  in  from  the  misty  shadows  where 
the  sea  lay;  and  then  with  him  rose  yet  higher  and 
higher  in  the  air;  and  passed  westward,  cleaving  the 
fields  of  light,  and  so  vanished ; — a  queen  of  the  wind,  a 
daughter  of  the  sun ;  a  creature  of  freedom,  of  victory, 
of  tireless  movement,  and  of  boundless  space,  a  thing  of 
heaven  and  of  liberty. 

The  evening  became  night ;  a  night  rough  and  cold 
almost  as  winter. 

There  was  no  boat  but  hers  upon  the  river,  which  ran 
high  and  strong.  She  left  the  lights  of  the  town  behind 
her,  aud  came  into  the  darkness  of  the  country.  Now 
and  then  the  moon  shone  a  moment  through  the  storm- 
wrack,  here  and  there  a  torch  glimmered,  borne  by  some 
wayfarer  over  a  bridge. 

There  was  no  other  light. 

The  bells  of  the  cathedral  chiming  a  miserere,  sounded 
full  of  woe  behind  her  in  the  still  sad  air. 

There  stood  but  one  building  between  her  and  her 
home,  a  square  strong  tower  built  upon  the  edge  of  the 
stream,  of  which  the  peasants  told  many  tales  of  horror. 
It  was  of  ancient  date,  and  spacious,  and  very  strong. 
Its  upper  chambers  were  used  as  a  granary  by  the  farm- 
people  who  owned  it ;  the  vaulted  hall  was  left  unused 
by  them,  partly  because  the  river  had  been  known  to 
rise  high  enough  to  flood  the  floor  ;  partly  because  legend 
had  bequeathed  to  it  a  ghastly  repute  of  spirits  of  mur- 
dered men  who  haunted  it. 

No  man  or  woman  in  all  the  country  round  dared 
venture  to  it  after  nightfall ;  it  was  all  that  the  stoutest 
would  do  to  fetch  and  carry  grain  there  at  broad  day ; 


IT  8  FOLLE-FARINE 

and  the  peasant  who,  being  belated,  rowed  his  market- 
boat  past  it  when  the  moon  was  high,  moved  his  oar  with 
one  trembling  hand,  and  with  the  other  crossed  himself 
unceasingly. 

To  Folle-Farine  it  bore  no  such  terror. 

The  unconscious  pantheism  breathed  into  her  with  her 
earliest  thoughts,  with  the  teachings  of  Phratos,  made 
her  see  a  nameless  mystical  and  always  wondrous  beauty 
in  every  blade  of  grass  that  fed  on  the  dew,  and  with  the 
light  rejoiced  ;  in  every  bare  brown  stone  that  flashed  to 
gold  in  bright  brook  waters,  under  a  tuft  of  weed;  in 
every  hillside  stream  that  leaping  and  laughing  sparkled 
in  the  sun ;  in  every  wind  that  wailing  went  over  the 
sickness  of  the  weary  world. 

For  such  a  temper,  no  shape  of  the  day  or  the  night,  no 
miracle  of  life  or  of  death  can  have  terror;  it  can  dread 
nothing,  because  every  created  thing  has  in  it  a  divine 
origin  and  an  eternal'5 mystery. 

As  she  and  the  boat  passed  out  into  the  loneliness  of 
the  country,  with  fitful  moon  gleams  to  light  its  passage, 
the  weather  and  the  stream  grew  wilder  yet. 

There  were  on  both  sides  strips  of  the  silvery  inland 
sands,  beds  of  tall  reeds,  and  the  straight  stems  of  poplars, 
ghostlike  in  the  gloom.  The  tide  rushed  faster;  the 
winds  blew  more  strongly  from  the  north  ;  the  boat 
rocked,  and  now  and  then  was  washed  with  water,  till 
its  edges  were  submerged. 

She  stood  up  in  it,  and  gave  her  strength  to  its  guid- 
ance; it  was  all  that  she  could  do  to  keep  its  course 
straight,  and  steer  it  so  that  it  should  not  grate  upon  the 
sand,  nor  be  blown  into  the  tangles  of  the  river  reeds 

For  herself  she  had  no  care,  she  could  swim  like  any 
cygnet;  and  for  her  own  sport  had  spent  hours  in  water 
at  all  seasons.  But  she  knew  that  to  Claudis  Flamma 
the  boat  was  an  honored  treasure,  since  to  replace  it 
would  have  cost  him  many  a  hard-earned  and  well-loved 
piece  of  money. 

As  she  stood  thus  upright  in  the  little  tossing  vessel 
against  the  darkness  and  the  winds,  she  passed  the  soli- 
tary building;  it  had  been  placed  so  low  down  against 
the  shore,  that  its  front  walls,  strong  of  hewn  stone,  and 


FOLLE-FARINE.  179 

deep  bedded  in  the  soil,  were  half  submerged  in  the  dense 
growth  of  the  reeds  and  of  the  willowy  osiers  which 
grew  up  and  brushed  the  great  arched  windows  of  its 
haunted  hall.  The  lower  half  of  one  of  the  seven  win- 
dows had  been  blown  wide  open ;  a  broad  square  case- 
ment, braced  with  iron  bars,  looking  out  upon  the  river, 
and  lighted  by  a  sickly  glimmer  of  the  moon. 

Her  boat  was  swayed  close  against  the  wall,  in  a  sud- 
den lurch,  caused  by  a  fiercer  gust  of  wind  and  higher 
wave  of  the  strong  tide ;  the  rushes  entangled  it ;  it 
grounded  on  the  sand.  There  was  no  chance,  she  knew, 
of  setting  it  afloat  again  without  her  leaving  it  to  gain  a 
footing  on  the  land,  and  use  her  force  to  push  it  oif  into 
the  current. 

She  leaped  out  without  a  moment's  thought  among  the 
rushes,  with  her  kirtle  girt  up  close  above  her  knees. 
She  sank  to  her  ankles  in  the  sand,  and  stood  to  her  waist 
in  the  water.  • 

But  she  was  almost  as  light  and  sure  of  foot  as  a  moor- 
gull,  when  it  lights  upon  the  treacherous  mosses  of  a  bog  ; 
and  standing  on  the  soaked  and  shelving  bank,  she  thrust 
herself  with  all  her  might  against  her  boat,  dislodged  it, 
and  pushed  it  out  once  more  afloat. 

She  was  about  to  wade  to  it  and  spring  into  it,  before 
the  stream  had  time  to  move  it  farther  out,  when  an  owl 
flew  from  the  open  window  behind  her.  Unconsciously 
she  turned  her  head  to  look  whence  the  bird  had  come. 

She  saw  the  wide  dark  square  of  the  opened  casemeut; 
the  gleam  of  a  lamp  within  the  cavern-like  vastness  of 
the  vaulted  hall.  Instinctively  she  paused,  and  drew 
closer,  and  forgot  the  boat. 

The  stone  sills  of  the  seven  windows  were  level  with 
the  topmost  sprays  of  the  tall  reeds  and  the  willowy  un- 
derwood ;  they  were,  therefore,  level  with  herself.  She 
saw  straight  in  ;  saw,  so  far  as  the  pale  uncertain  fusion* 
of  moon  and  lamp  rays  showed  them,  the  height  and 
width  of  this  legend  haunted  place ;  vaulted  and  pillared 
with  timber  and  with  stone ;  dim,  and  lonely  as  a  cathe- 
dral crypt ;  and  with  the  night-birds  flying  to  and  fro  in 
it,  as  in  a  ruin,  seeking  their  nests  in  its  rafters  and  in  the 
capitals  of  its  columns. 


180  FOLLE-FARINE. 

No  fear,  but  a  great  awe  fell  upon  her.  She  let  the 
boat  drift  on  its  way  unheeded ;  and  stood  there  at  gaze 
like  a  forest  doe. 

She  had  passed  this  grain  tower  with  every  day  or 
night  that  she  had  gone  down  the  river  upon  the  errands 
of  her  taskmaster ;  but  she  had  never  looked  within  it 
once,  holding  the  peasants'  stories  and  terrors  in  the  cold 
scorn  of  her  intrepid  courage. 

Now,  when  she  looked,  she  for  the  first  time  believed 
— believed  that  the  dead  lived  and  gathered  there. 

White,  shadowy,  countless  shapes  loomed  through  the 
gloom,  all  motionless,  all  noiseless,  all  beautiful,  with  the 
serene  yet  terrible  loveliness  of  death. 

In  their  midst  burned  a  lamp ;  as  the  light  burns  night 
and  day  in  the  tombs  of  the  kings  of  the  East. 

Her  color  paled,  her  breath  came  and  went,  her  body 
trembled  like  a  leaf;  yet  she  was  not  afraid. 

A  divine  ecstasy  of  surprise  and  faith  smote  the  dull 
misery  of  her  life.  She  saw  at  last  another  world  than 
the  world  of  toil  in  which  she  had  labored  without  sigh 
and  without  hope,  as  the  blinded  ox  labored  in  the  brick- 
field, treading  his  endless  circles  in  the  endless  dark,  and 
only  told  that  it  was  day  by  blows. 

She  had  no  fear  of  them — these,  whom  she  deemed  the 
dwellers  of  the  lands  beyond  the  sun,  could  not  be  more 
cruel  to  her  than  had  been  the  sons  of  men.  She  yearned 
to  them,  longed  for  them  ;  wondered  with  rapture  and 
with  awe  if  these  were  the  messengers  of  her  father's 
kingdom  ;  if  these  would  have  mercy  on  her,  and  take 
her  with  them  to  their  immortal  homes  —  whether  of 
heaven  or  of  hell,  what  mattered  it? 

It  was  enough  to  her  that  it  would  not  be  of  earth. 

She  raised  herself  upon  the  ledge  above  the  rushes, 
poised  herself  lightly  as  a  bird,  and  with  deft  soundless 
•feet  dropped  safely  on  the  floor  within,  and  stood  in  the 
midst  of  that  enchanted  world — stood  motionless,  gazing 
upwards  with  rapt  eyes,  and  daring  barely  to  draw  breath 
with  any  audible  sigh,  lest  she  should  rouse  them,  and  be 
driven  from  their  presence.  The  flame  of  the  lamp,  and 
the  moonlight,  reflected  back  from  the  foam  of  the  risen 
waters,  shed  a  strange,  pallid,  shadowy  light  on  all  the 
forms  around  her. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  181 

"They  are  the  dead,  surely,"  she  thought,  as  she  stood 
among  them ;  and  she  stayed  there,  with  her  arms 
folded  on  her  breast  to  still  its  beating,  lest  any  sound 
should  anger  them  and  betray  her ;  a  thing  lower  than 
the  dust — a  mortal  amidst  this  great  immortal  host. 

The  mists  and  the  shadows  between  her  eyes  and  them 
parted  them  as  with  a  sea  of  dim  and  subtle  vapor, 
through  which  they  looked  white  and  impalpable  as  a 
summer  cloud,  when  it  seems  to  lean  and  touch  the  edge 
of  the  world  in  a  gray,  quiet  dawn. 

They  were  but  the  creations  of  an  artist's  classic 
dreams,  but  to  her  they  seemed  to  thrill,  to  move,  to  sigh, 
to  gaze  on  her;  to  her,  they  seemed  to  live  with  that 
life  of  the  air,  of  the  winds,  of  the  stars,  of  silence  and 
solitude,  and  all  the  nameless  liberties  of  death,  of  which 
she  dreamed  when,  shunned,  and  cursed,  and  hungered, 
she  looked  up  to  the  skies  at  night  from  a  sleepless  bed. 

They  were  indeed  the  dead  :  the  dead  of  that  fair  time 
when  all  the  earth  was  young,  and  men  communed  with 
their  deities,  and  loved  them,  and  were  not  afraid.  When 
their  gods  were  with  them  in  their  daily  lives,  when  in 
every  breeze  that  curled  the  sea,  in  every  cloud  that  dark- 
ened in  the  west,  in  every  water-course  that  leaped  and 
sparkled  in  the  sacred  cedar  groves,  in  every  bee-sucked 
blossom  of  wild  thyme  that  grew  purple  by  the  marble 
temple  steps,  the  breath  and  the  glance  of  the  gods  were 
felt,  the  footfall  and  the  voice  of  the  gods  were  heard. 

They  were  indeed  the  dead:  the  dead  who — dying 
earliest,  whilst  yet  the  earth  was  young  enough  to  sorrow 
for  its  heroic  lives  to  embalm  them,  to  remember  them, 
and  to  count  them  worthy  of  lament — perished  in  their 
bodies,  but  lived  forever  immortal  in  the  traditions  of  the 
world. 

From  every  space  of  the  somber  chamber  some  one  of 
these  gazed  on  her  through  the  mist. 

Here  the  silver  dove  of  Argos  winged  her  way  through 
the  iron-jaws  of  the  dark  sea-gates. 

Here  the  white  Io  wandered  in  exile  and  unresting,  for- 
ever scourged  on  by  the  sting  in  her  flesh,  as  a  man  by 
the  genius  in  him. 

Here  the  glad  god  whom  all  the  woodlands  loved 
16 


182  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

played  in  the  moonlight,  on  his  reeds,  to  the  young  stags 
that  couched  at  his  feet  in  golden  beds  of  daffodils  and 
asphodel. 

Here  in  a  darkened  land  the  great  Demeter  moved,  be- 
reaved and  childless,  bidding  the  vine  be  barren,  and  the 
fig-trees  fruitless,  and  the  seed  of  the  sown  furrows 
strengthless  to  multiply  and  (ill  the  sickles  with  ripe  in- 
crease. 

Here  the  women  of  Thebes  danced  upon  Cithaeron  in 
the  mad  moonless  nights,  under  the  cedars,  with  loose 
hair  on  the  wind,  and  bosoms  that  heaved  and  brake 
through  their  girdles  of  fawnskin. 

Here  at  his  labor,  in  Pherae,  the  sun-god  toiled  as  a 
slave;  the  highest  wrought  as  the  lowest;  while  wise 
Hermes  stood  by  and  made  mirth  of  the  kingship  that 
had  bartered  the  rod  of  dominion  for  the  mere  music 
which  empty  air  could  make  in  a  hollow  reed. 

Here,  too,  the  brother  gods  stood,  Hypnos,  and  Onei- 
ros,  and  Thanatos ;  their  bowed  heads  crowned  with  the 
poppy  and  moonwort,  the  flowering  fern,  and  the  ama- 
ranth, and,  pressed  to  their  lips,  a  white  rose,  in  the  old 
sweet  symbol  of  silence  ;  fashioned  in  the  same  likeness, 
with  the  same  winged  feet,  which  yet  fall  so  softly  that 
no  human  ears  hear  their  coming ;  the  gods  that  most 
of  all  have  pity  on  men, — the  gods  of  the  Night  and  of 
the  Grave. 

These  she  saw,  not  plainly,  but  through  the  wavering 
shadows  and  the  halo  of  the  vapors  which  floated,  dense 
and  silvery  as  smoke,  in  from  the  misty  river.  Their 
lips  were  dumb,  and  for  her  they  had  no  name  nor  story, 
and  yet  they  spoke  to  her  with  familiar  voices.  She 
knew  them ;  she  knew  that  they  were  gods,  and  yet  to 
the  world  were  dead;  and  in  the  eyes  of  the  forest-god, 
who  piped  upon  his  reeds,  she  saw  the  eyes  of  Phratos 
look  on  her  with  their  tender  laughter  and  their  unfor- 
gotten  love. 

Just  so  had  he  looked  so  long  ago — so  long  ! — in  the 
deep  woods  at  moonrise,  when  he  had  played  to  the 
bounding  fawns,  to  the  leaping  waters,  to  the  listening 
trees,  to  the  sleeping  flowers. 

They  had  called  him  an  outcast, — and  lo  I — she  found 
him  a  god. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  183 

She  sank  on  her  knees,  and  buried  her  face  in  her 
hands  and  wept, — wept  with  grief  for  the  living  lost  for- 
ever,— wept  with  joy  that  the  dead  forever  lived. 

Tears  had  rarely  sprung  to  her  proud,  rebellious  eyes ; 
she  deemed  them  human  things, — things  of  weakness 
and  of  shame ;  she  had  thrust  them  back  and  bit  her  lips 
till  the  blood  came,  in  a  thousand  hours  of  pain,  rather 
than  men  should  see  them  and  exult.  The  passion  had 
its  way  for  once,  and  spent  itself,  and  passed.  She  rose 
trembling  and  pale,  with  her  eyes  wet  and  dimmed  in 
luster,  like  stars  that  shine  through  rain,  and  looked 
around  her  fearfully. 

She  thought  that  the  gods  might  rise  in  wrath  against 
her,  even  as  mortals  did,  for  daring  to  be  weary  of  her 
life. 

As  she  rose,  she  saw  for  the  first  time  before  the  cold 
hearth  the  body  of  a  man. 

It  was  stretched  straightly  out  on  the  stone  floor ;  the 
chest  was  bare ;  upon  the  breast  the  right  hand  was 
clinched  close  and  hard ;  the  limbs  were  in  profound 
repose ;  the  head  was  lit  by  the  white  glimmer  from  the 
moon ;  the  face  was  calm  and  colorless,  and  full  of  sad- 
ness. 

In  the  dim  strange  light  it  looked  white  as  marble, 
colossal  as  a  statue,  in  that  passionless  rest, — that  dread 
repose. 

Instinctively  she  drew  nearer  to  him,  breathless  and 
allured ;  she  bent  forward  and  looked  closer  on  his  face. 

He  was  a  god,  like  all  the  rest,  she  thought;  but  dead, 
— not  as  they  were  dead,  with  eyes  that  rejoiced  in  the 
light  of  cloudless  suns,  and  with  lips  that  smiled  with  a 
serene  benignity  and  an  eternal  love, — but  dead,  as  mor- 
tals die,  without  hope,  without  release,  with  the  breath 
frozen  on  their  tired  lips,  and  bound  on  their  hearts  eter- 
nally the  burden  of  their  sin  and  woe. 

She  leaned  down  close  by  his  side,  and  looked  on  him, 
— sorrowful,  because  he  alone  of  all  the  gods  was  stricken 
there,  and  he  alone  had  the  shadow  of  mortality  upon 
him. 

Looking  thus  she  saw  that  his  hands  were  clinched 
upon  his  chest,  as  though  their  latest  effort  had  been  to 


184  FOLLE-FARINE. 

tear  the  bones  asunder,  and  wrench  out  a  heart  that 
ached  beneath  them.  She  saw  that  this  was  not  a  divine, 
but  a  human  form, — dead  indeed  as  the  rest  were,  but 
dead  by  a  man's  death  of  assassination,  or  disease,  or 
suicide,  or  what  men  love  to  call  the  "  act  of  Heaven," 
whereby  they  mean  the  self-sown  fruit  of  their  own  faults 
and  follies. 

Had  the  gods  slain  him — being  a  mortal — for  his  en- 
trance there  ? 

Marcellin  in  legends  had  told  her  of  such  things. 

He  was  human ;  with  a  human  beauty ;  which,  yet 
white  and  cold  and  golden,  full  of  serenity  and  sadness, 
was  like  the  sun-god's  yonder,  and  very  strange  to  her 
whose  eyes  had  only  rested  on  the  sunburnt,  pinched, 
and  rugged  faces  of  the  populace  around  her. 

That  beauty  allured  her ;  she  forgot  that  he  had  against 
her  the  crime  of  that  humanity  which  she  hated.  He 
was  to  her  like  some  noble  forest  beast,  some  splendid 
bird  of  prey,  struck  down  by  a  bolt  from  some  murderous 
bow,  strengthless  and  senseless,  yet  majestic  even  in  its 
fall. 

"The  gods  slew  him  because  he  dared  to  be  too  like 
themselves,"  she  thought,  "else  he  could  not  be  so  beau- 
tiful,— he, — only  a  man,  and  dead  ?" 

The  dreamy  intoxication  of  fancy  had  deadened  her  to 
all  sense  of  time  or  fact.  The  exaltation  of  nerve  and 
brain  made  all  fantastic  fantasies  seem  possible  to  her 
as  truth. 

Herself,  she  was  strong;  and  desolate  no  more,  since 
the  eyes  of  the  immortals  had  slniled  on  her,  and  bade 
her  welcome  there;  and  she  felt  an  infinite  pity  on  him, 
inasmuch  as  with  all  his  likeness  to  them  he  yet,  having  in- 
curred their  wrath,  lay  helpless  there  as  any  broken  reed. 

She  bent  above  him  her  dark  rich  face,  with  a  soft  com- 
passion on  it ;  she  stroked  the  pale  heavy  gold  of  his  hair, 
with  fingers  brown  and  lithe,  but  infinitely  gentle ;  she 
fanned  the  cold  pain  of  his  forehead,  with  the  breath  of 
her  roselike  mouth  ;  she  touched  him  and  stroked  him 
and  gazed  on  him,  as  she  would  have  caressed  and  looked 
on  the  velvet  hide  of  the  stag,  the  dappled  plumage  of 
the  hawk,  the  white  leaf  of  the  lily. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  185 

A  subtle  vague  pleasure  stole  on  her,  a  sharp  sweet 
sorrow  moved  her, — for  he  was  beautiful,  and  he  was 
dead. 

"If  they  would  give  him  back  his  life?"  she  thought: 
and  she  looked  for  the  glad  forest-god  playing  on  his  reed 
amidst  the  amber  asphodels,  he  who  had  the  smile  and  the 
glance  of  Phratos.    But  she  could  see  Pan's  face  no  more. 

The  wind  rose,  the  moon  was  hidden,  all  was  dark  save 
the  flicker  of  the  flame  of  the  lamp  ;  the  storm  had  broken, 
and  the  rain  fell :  she  saw  nothing  now  but  the  bowed  head 
of  Thanatos,  holding  the  rose  of  silence  to  his  lips. 

On  her  ear  there  seemed  to  steal  a  voice  from  the  dark- 
ness, saying: 

"  One  life  alone  can  ransom  another.  Live  immortal 
with  us  ;  or  for  that  dead  man — perish." 

She  bowed  her  head  where  she  knelt  in  the  darkness ; 
the  force  of  an  irresistible  fate  seemed  upon  her  ;  that  sac- 
rifice which  is  at  once  the  delirium  and  divinity  of  her  sex 
had  entered  into  her. 

She  was  so  lowly  a  thing ;  a  creature  so  loveless  and 
cursed ;  the  gods,  if  they  took  her  in  pity,  would  soon 
scorn  her  as  men  had  scorned  ;  whilst  he  who  lay  dead 
— though  so  still  and  so  white,  and  so  mute  and  so  pow- 
erless,— he  looked  a  king  among  men,  though  the  gods 
for  his  daring  had  killed  him. 

"Let  him  live  !"  she  murmured.  "It's  for  me, — I  am 
nothing — nothing.  Let  me  die  as  the  Dust  dies — what 
matter  ?" 

The  wind  blew  the  flame  of  the  lamp  into  darkness ; 
the  moon  still  shone  through  the  storm  on  to  the  face  of 
Thanatos. 

He  alone  heard.  He — the  only  friend  who  fails  no  living 
thing.  He  alone  remained,  and  waited  for  her :  he,  whom 
alone  of  all  the  gods — for  this  man's  sake — she  chose. 


16* 


186  FOLLE-FARINE. 


CHAPTER    III. 

When  the  trance  of  her  delirious  imaginations  passed, 
they  left  her  tranquil,  but  with  the  cold  of  death  seeming 
to  pass  already  from  the  form  she  looked  on  into  hers. 
She  was  still  crouching  by  his  body  on  the  hearth ;  and 
knew  what  she  had  chosen,  and  did  not  repent. 

He  was  dead  still; — or  so  she  thought; — she  watched 
him  with  dim  dreaming  eyes,  watched  him  as  women  do 
who  love. 

She  drew  the  fair  glistening  hair  through  her  hands  ; 
she  touched  the  closed  and  blue  veined  eyelids  tenderly ; 
she  laid  her  ear  against  his  heart  to  hearken  for  the  first 
returning  pulses  of  the  life  she  had  brought  back  to  him. 

It  was  no  more  to  her  the  dead  body  of  a  man,  un- 
known, unheeded,  a  stranger,  and  because  a  mortal,  of 
necessity  to  her  a  foe.  It  was  a  nameless,  wondrous, 
mystic  force  and  splendor  to  which  she  had  given  back 
the  pulse  of  existence,  the  light  of  day;  which  was  no 
more  the  gods',  nor  any  man's,  no  more  the  prey  of 
death,  nor  the  delight  of  love ;  but  hers — hers — shared 
only  with  the  greatness  she  had  bought  for  him. 

Even  as  she  looked  on  him  she  felt  the  first  faint  flutter 
in  his  heart;  she  heard  the  first  faint  breath  upon  his  lips. 

His  eyes  unclosed  and  looked  straight  at  hers,  without 
reason  or  luster  in  them,  clouded  with  a  heavy  and  de- 
lirous  pain. 

"  To  die — of  hunger — like  a  rat  in  a  trap  J"  he  muttered 
in  his  throat,  and  strove  to  rise;  he  fell  back,  senseless, 
striking  his  head  upon  the  stones. 

She  started;  her  hands  ceased  to  wander  through  his 
hair,  and  touch  his  cold  lips  as  she  would  touch  the  cup 
of  a  flower ;  she  rose  slowly  to  her  feet. 

She  had  heard ;  and  the  words,  so  homely  and  so 
familiar  in  the  lives  of  all  the  poor,  pierced  the  wild 
faiths  and  visions  of  her  heated  brain,  as  a  ray  of  the 


FOLLE-FARTNE.  18? 

clear  daybreak  pierces  through  the  purple  smoke  from 
altar  fires  of  sacrifice. 

The  words  were  so  terrible,  and  yet  so  trite ;  they 
cleft  the  mists  of  her  dreams  as  tempered  steel  cleaves 
folds  of  gossamer. 

11  To  die — of  hunger!" 

She  muttered  the  phrase  after  him — shaken  from  her 
stupor  by  its  gaunt  and  common  truth. 

It  roused  her  to  the  consciousness  of  all  his  actual 
needs.  Her  heart  rebelled  even  against  the  newly-found 
immortal  masters,  since  being  in  wrath  they  could  not 
strike  him  swiftly  with  their  vengeance,  but  had  killed 
him  thus  with  these  lingering  and  most  bitter  pangs,  and 
had  gathered  there  as  to  a  festival  to  see  him  die. 

As  she  stooped  above  him,  she  could  discern  the  faint 
earthy  cavernous  odor,  which  comes  from  the  languid 
lungs  and  empty  chest  of  one  who  has  long  fasted,  almost 
unto  death. 

She  had  known  that  famine  odor  many  a  time  ere  then; 
in  the  hut  of  Manon  Dax,  and  by  the  hedge-rows  and  in 
the  ditches,  that  made  the  sick-beds  of  many  another,  as 
old,  as  wretched,  and  as  nobly  stubborn  against  alms;  in 
times  of  drought  or  in  inclement  winters,  the  people  in 
all  that  country-side  suffered  continually  from  the  hunger 
torment ;  she  had  often  passed  by  men  and  women,  and 
children,  crouching  in  black  and  wretched  cabins,  or  lying 
fever-stricken  on  the  cold  stony  fields,  glad  to  gnaw  a 
shred  of  sheepskin,  or  suck  a  thorny  bramble  of  the  fields 
to  quiet  the  gnawing  of  their  entrails. 

She  stood  still  beside  him,  and  thought. 

All  light  had  died ;  the  night  was  black  with  storm ; 
the  shadowy  shapes  were  gone ;  there  were  the  roar  of 
the  rushing  river,  and  the  tumult  of  the  winds  and  rains 
upon  the  silence ;  all  she  saw  was  this  golden  head ;  this 
colorless  face  ;  this  lean  and  nerveless  hand  that  rested 
on  the  feebly  beating  heart; — these  she  saw  as  she  would 
have  seen  the  white  outlines  of  a  statue  in  the  dark. 

He  moved  a  little  with  a  hollow  sigh. 

"Bread — bread — bread!"  he  muttered.  "To  die  for 
bread  !" 

At  the  words,  all  the  quick  resource  and  self-reliance, 


188  FOLLE-FARWE. 

which  the  hard  life  she  led  had  sharpened  and  strength- 
ened in  her,  awoke  amidst  all  the  dreams  and  passions, 
and  meditations  of  her  mystical  faiths,  and  her  poetic 
ignorance. 

The  boldness  and  the  independence  of  her  nature 
roused  themselves;  she  had  prayed  for  him  to  the  gods, 
and  to  the  gods  given  herself  for  him — that  was  well — 
if  they  kept  their  faith.  But  if  they  forsook  it?  The 
blood  rushed  back  to  her  heart  with  its  old  proud  current; 
alone,  she  swore  to  herself  to  save  him.  To  save  him  in 
the  gods'  despite. 

In  the  street  that  day,  she  had  found  the  half  of  a  roll 
of  black  bread.  It  had  lain  in  the  mud,  none  claiming  it; 
a  sulky  lad  passed  it  in  scorn,  a  beggar  with  gold  in  his 
wallet  kicked  it  aside  with  his  crutch  ;  she  took  it  and 
put  it  by  for  her  supper ;  so  often  some  stripe  or  some 
jibe  replaced  a  begrudged  meal  for  her  at  Flamma's 
board. 

That  was  all  she  had.  A  crust  dry  as  a  bone,  which  could 
do  nothing  towards  saving  him,  which  could  be  of  no  more 
use  to  pass  those  clinched  teeth,  and  warm  those  frozen 
veins,  than  so  much  of  the  wet  sand  gathered  up  from  the 
river-shore.  Neither  could  there  be  any  wood,  which,  if 
brought  in  and  lit,  would  burn.  All  the  timber  was  green 
and  full  of  sap,  and  all,  for  a  score  square  leagues  around, 
was  at  that  hour  drenched  with  water. 

She  knew  that  the  warmth  of  fire  to  dry  the  deadly 
dampness  in  the  air,  the  warmth  of  wine  to  quicken  the 
chillness  and  the  torpor  of  the  reviving  life,  were  what 
were  wanted  beyond  all  other  things.  She  had  seen 
famine  in  all  its  stages,  and  she  knew  the  needs  and 
dangers  of  that  fell  disease. 

There  was  not  a  creature  in  all  the  world  who  would 
have  given  her  so  much  as  a  loaf  or  a  fagot;  even  if 
the  thought  of  human  aid  had  ever  dawned  on  her.  As 
it  was,  she  never  even  dreamed  of  it;  every  human  hand 
— to  the  rosy  fist  of  the  smallest  and  fairest  child — was 
always  clinched  against  her;  she  would  have  sooner 
asked  for  honey  from  a  knot  of  snakes,  or  sought  a  bed 
of  roses  in  a  swarm  of  wasps,  as  have  begged  mercy  or 
aid  at  any  human  hearth. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  189 

She  knew  nothing,  either,  of  any  social  laws  that  might 
have  made  such  need  as  this  a  public  care  on  public  alms. 
She  was  used  to  see  men,  women,  and  children  perishing 
of  want ;  she  had  heard  people  curse  the  land  that  bore, 
and  would  not  nourish,  them.  She  was  habituated  to 
work  hard  for  every  bit  or  drop  that  passed  her  lips;  she 
lived  amidst  multitudes  who  did  the  same  ;  she  knew 
nothing  of  any  public  succor  to  which  appeal  could  in 
such  straits  be  made. 

If  bread  were  not  forthcoming,  a  man  or  a  woman  had 
to  die  for  lack  of  it,  as  Manon  Dax  and  Marcellin  had 
done;  that  seemed  to  her  a  rule  of  fate,  against  which 
there  was  no  good  in  either  resistance  or  appeal. 

What  could  she  do?  she  pondered. 

Whatever  she  would  do,  she  knew  that  she  had  to  do 
quickly.     Yet  she  stood  irresolute. 

To  do  anything  she  had  to  stoop  herself  again  down  to 
that  sort  of  theft  to  which  no  suffering  or  privation  of  her 
own  had  ever  tempted  her. 

In  a  vague  fierce  fashion,  unholpen  and  untaught,  she 
hated  all  sin. 

All  quoted  it  as  her  only  birthright ;  all  told  her  that 
she  was  imbued  with  it  body  and  soul ;  all  saw  it  in  her 
slightest  acts,  in  her  most  harmless  words ;  and  she  ab- 
horred this,  the  one  gift  which  men  cast  to  her  as  her 
only  heirloom,  with  a  strong  scornful  loathing  which 
stood  her  in  the  stead  of  virtue.  With  an  instinctive  cyni- 
cism which  moved  her  continually,  yet  to  which  she  could 
have  given  no  name,  she  had  loved  to  see  the  children 
and  the  maidens — those  who  held  her  accursed,  and  were 
themselves  held  so  innocent  and  just — steal  the  ripe 
cherries  from  the  stalk,  pluck  the  forbidden  flowers  that 
nodded  over  the  convent  walls,  pierce  through  the  bound- 
ary fence  to  reach  another's  pear,  speak  a  lie  softly  to 
the  old  grayheaded  priest,  and  lend  their  ripe  lips  to  a 
soldier's  rough  salute,  while  she,  the  daughter  of  hell, 
pointed  at,  despised,  shunned  as  a  leper,  hunted  as  a 
witch,  kept  her  hands  soilless  and  her  lips  untouched. 

It  was  a  pride  to  her  to  say  in  her  teeth,  "  I  am  stronger 
than  they,"  when  she  saw  the  stolen  peach  in  their  hand, 
and  heard  the  lying  word  on  their  tongue.  It  had  a  savage 


190  FOLLE-FARINE. 

sweetness  for  her,  the  will  with  which  she  denied  herself 
the  luxurious  fruit  that,  unseen,  she  could  have  reached 
a  thousand  times  from  the  walls  when  her  throat  was 
parched  and  her  body  empty ;  with  which  she  uttered  the 
truth,  and  the  truth  alone,  though  it  brought  the  blows 
of  the  cudgel  down  on  her  shoulders ;  with  which  she 
struck  aside  in  disdain  the  insolent  eyes  and  mocking 
mouths  of  the  youths,  who  would  fain  have  taught  her 
that,  if  beggared  of  all  other  things,  she  was  at  least  rich 
in  form  and  hue.  She  hated  sin,  for  sin  seemed  to  her 
only  a  human  word  for  utter  feebleness ;  she  had  never 
sinned  for  herself,  as  far  as  she  knew ;  yet  to  serve  this 
man,  on  whose  face  she  had  never  looked  before  that 
night,  she  was  ready  to  stoop  to  the  thing  which  she  ab- 
horred. 

She  had  been  so  proud  of  her  freedom  from  all  those 
frailties  of  passion,  and  greed,  and  self-pity,  with  which 
the  souls  of  the  maidens  around  her  were  haunted ; — so 
proud,  with  the  fierce,  chaste,  tameless  arrogance  of  the 
women  of  her  race,  that  was  bred  in  their  blood,  and 
taught  them  as  their  first  duty,  by  the  Oriental  and  jeal- 
ous laws  of  their  vengeful  and  indolent  masters. 

She  had  been  so  proud  ! — and  this  cleanliness  of  hand 
and  heart,  this  immunity  from  her  enemies7  weakness, 
this  independence  which  she  had  worn  as  a  buckler  of 
proof  against  all  blows,  and  had  girded  about  her  as  a 
zone  of  purity,  more  precious  than  gold,  this,  the  sole 
treasure  she  had,  she  was  about  to  surrender  for  the  sake 
of  a  stranger. 

It  was  a  greater  gift,  and  one  harder  to  give,  than  the 
life  which  she  had  offered  for  his  to  the  gods. 

She  kneeled  on  one  knee  on  the  stone  floor  beside  him, 
her  heart  torn  with  a  mute  and  violent  struggle;  her 
bent  face  dark  and  rigid,  her  straight  haughty  brows  knit 
together  in  sadness  and  conflict.  In  the  darkness  he 
moved  a  little ;  he  was  unconscious,  yet  ever,  in  that 
burning  stupor,  one  remembrance,  one  regret,  remained 
with  him. 

"  That  the  mind  of  a  man  can  be  killed  for  the  want 
of  the  food  thrown  to  swine  !"  he  muttered  drearily,  in 
the  one  gleam  of  reason  that  abode  in  the  delirium  of 
his  brain. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  \Q\ 

The  words  were  broken,  disjointed,  almost  inarticulate; 
but  they  stung  her  to  action  as  the  spur  stings  a  horse. 

She  started  erect,  and  crossed  the  chamber,  leapt 
through  the  open  portion  of  the  casement,  and  lighted 
again  without,  knee-deep  in  water;  she  lost  her  footing 
and  fell  entangled  in  the  rushes;  but  she  rose  and  climbed 
in  the  darkness  to  where  the  roots  of  an  oak  stump 
stretched  into  the  stream,  and,  gaining  the  shore,  ran  as 
well  as  the  storm  and  the  obscurity  allowed  her,  along 
the  bank,  straight  towards  Ypres. 

It  was  a  wild  and  bitter  night;  the  rushing  of  the 
foaming  river  went  by  her  all  the  way;  the  path  was 
flooded,  and  she  was  up  to  her  ankles  in  water  at  every 
step,  and  often  forced  to  wade  through  channels  a  foot 
deep. 

She  went  on  straight  towards  her  home,  unconscious 
of  cold,  of  fatigue,  of  her  wet  clinging  clothes,  of  the 
water  that  splashed' unseen  in  the  black  night  up  against 
her  face  as  her  steps  sank  into  some  shaking  strip  of 
marsh,  some  brook  which,  in  the  rising  of  the  river,  ran 
hissing  and  swelling  to  twice  its  common  height.  All 
she  was  sensible  of  was  of  one  inspiration,  one  purpose, 
one  memory  that  seemed  to  give  her  the  wings  of  the 
wind,  and  yet  to  clog  her  feet  with  the  weight  of  lead, — 
the  memory  of  that  white,  sad,  senseless  face,  lying 
beneath  the  watch  of  the  cruel  gods. 

She  reached  Ypres,  feeling  and  scenting  her  way  by 
instinct,  as  a  dog  does,  all  through  the  tumult  of  the  air 
and  against  the  force  of  the  driving  rains.  She  met  no 
living  creature  ;  the  weather  was  too  bad  for  even  a 
beggar  to  be  afoot  in  it,  and  even  the  stray  and  homeless 
beasts  had  sought  some  shelter  from  a  ruined  shed  or 
crumbling  wall.  ■ 

As  softly  as  a  leaf  may  fall  she  unloosed  the  latch  of 
the  orchard,  stole  through  the  trees,  and  took  her  way,  in 
an  impenetrable  gloom,  with  the  swift  sure  flight  of  one 
to  whom  the  place  had  long  been  as  familiar  by  night  as 
day. 

The  uproar  of  wind  and  rain  would  have  muffled  the 
loudest  tread.  The  shutters  of  the  mill-house  were  all 
closed;   it   was   quite   still.     Flamma   and   his  serving 


192  AFOLLE-FARINE. 

people  were  all  gone  to  their  beds  that  they  might  save, 
by  sleep,  the  cost  of  wood  and  candle. 

She  passed  round  to  the  side  of  the  house,  climbed  up 
the  tough  network  of  a  tree  of  ivy,  and  without  much 
labor  loosened  the  fastenings  of  her  own  loft  window,  and 
entering  there  passed  through  the  loft  into  the  body  of 
the  house. 

Opening  the  doors  of  the  passages  noiselessly,  she  stole 
down  the  staircase,  making  no  more  sound  than  a  hare 
makes  stealing  over  mosses  to  its  form.  The  ever-wake- 
ful lightly-sleeping  ears  of  a  miser  were  near  at  hand,  but 
even  they  were  not  aroused ;  and  she  passed  down 
unheard. 

She  went  hardily,  fearlessly,  once  her  mind  was  set 
upon  the  errand.  She  did  not  reason  with  herself,  as 
more  timorous  creatures  might  have  done,  that  being  half 
starved  as  recompense  for  strong  and  continual  labor,  she 
was  but  about  to  take  a  just  due  withheld,  a  fair  wage 
long  overdue.  She  only  resolved  to  take  what  another 
needed  by  a  violence  which  she  had  never  employed  to 
serve  her  own  needs,  and,  having  resolved,  went  to  exe- 
cute her  resolution  with  the  unhesitating  dauntlessness 
that  was  bred  in  her,  blood  and  bone. 

Knowing  all  the  turns  and  steps  of  the  obscure  passages, 
she  quickly  found  her  way  to  the  store-chambers  where 
such  food  and  fuel  as  were  wanted  in  the  house  were 
stored. 

The  latter  was  burnt,  and  the  former  eaten,  sparingly 
and  grudgingly,  but  the  store  of  both  was  at  this  season 
of  the  year  fairly  abundant.  It  had  more  than  once  hap- 
pened that  the  mill  had  been  cut  off  from  all  communica- 
tion with  the  outer  world  by  floods  that  reached  its 
upper  casements,  and  Claudis  Flamma  was  provided 
against  any  such  accidents;  the  more  abundantly  as  he 
had  more  than  once  found  it  a  lucrative  matter  in  such 
seasons  of  inundation  to  lower  provisions  from  his  roof  to 
boats  floating  below,  when  the  cotters  around  were  in 
dire  need  and  ready  to  sell  their  very  souls  for  a  bag  of 
rice  or  string  of  onions. 

Folle-Farine  opened  the  shutter  of  the  storeroom  and 
let  in  the  faint  gray  glimmer  from  the  clearing  skies. 


FOLLE-FARLNE.  193 

A  bat  which  had  been  resting  from  the  storm  against  the 
rafters  fluttered  violently  against  the  lattice ;  a  sparrow 
driven  down  the  chimney  in  the  hurricane  flew  up  from 
one  of  the  shelves  with  a  twittering  outcry. 

She  paused  to  open  the  lattice  for  them  both,  and  set 
them  free  to  fly  forth  into  the  still  sleeping  world ;  then 
she  took  an  old  rush  basket  that  hung  upon  a  nail,  and 
filled  it  with  the  best  of  such  homely  food  as  was  to  be 
found  there — loaves,  and  meats,  and  rice,  and  oil,  and  a 
flask  of  the  richest  wine — wine  of  the  south,  of  the  hue  of 
the  violet,  sold  under  secrecy  at  a  high  charge  and  profit. 

That  done,  she  tied  together  as  large  a  bundle  of 
brushwood  and  of  fagots  as  she  could  push  through  the 
window,  which  was  broad  and  square,  and  thrust  it  out 
by  slow  degrees;  put  her  basket  through  likewise,  and 
lowered  it  carefully  to  the  grouud ;  then  followed  them 
herself  with  the  agility  born  of  long  practice,  and  dropped 
on  the  grass  beneath. 

She  waited  but  to  close  and  refasten  the  shutter  from 
without,  then  threw  the  mass  of  fagots  on  her  shoulders, 
and  carrying  in  her  arms  the  osier  basket,  took  her 
backward  way  through  the  orchards  to  the  river. 

She  had  not  taken  either  bit  or  drop  for  her  own  use. 

She  was  well  used  to  carry  burdeus  as  heavy  as  the 
mules  bare,  and  to  walk  under  them  unassisted  for  many 
leagues  to  the  hamlets  and  markets  roundabout.  But 
even  her  strength  of  bronze  had  become  fatigued;  she 
felt  frozen  to  the  bone;  her  clothes  were  saturated  with 
water,  and  her  limbs  were  chill  and  stiff.  Yet  she 
trudged  on,  unblenching  and  unpausing,  over  the  soaked 
earth,  and  through  the  swollen  water  and  the  reeds, 
keeping  always  by  the  side  of  the  stream  that  was  so 
angry  in.  the  darkness ;  by  the  side  of  the  gray  flooded 
sands  and  the  rushes  that  were  blowing  with  a  sound 
like  the  sea 

She  met  no  living  creature  except  a  fox,  who  rushed 
between  her  feet,  holding  in  its  mouth  a  screaming 
chicken. 

Once  she  stumbled  and  struck  her  head  and  breast 
with  a  dull  blow  against  a  pile  of  wood  which,  in  the 
furious  weather,  was  unseen  by  her.     It  stunned  her  for 

17 


194  FOLLE-FARINE. 

the  instant,  but  she  rallied  and  looked  up  with  eyes  as 
used  to  pierce  the  deepest  gloom  as  any  goshawk's ;  she 
discerned  the  outline  of  the  Calvary,  towering  high  and 
weirdlike  above  the  edge  of  the  river,  where  the  priests 
and  people  had  placed  it,  so  that  the  boatmen  could  abase 
themselves  and  do  it  honor  as  they  passed  the  banks. 

The  lantern  on  the  cross  shone  far  across  the  stream, 
but  shed  no  rays  upon  the  path  she  followed. 

At  its  foot  she  had  stumbled  and  been  bruised  upon 
her  errand  of  mercy  ;  the  reflection  of  its  light  streamed 
across  to  the  opposing  shore,  and  gave  help  to  a  boat- 
load of  smugglers  landing  stolen  tobacco  in  a  little  creek. 

She  recovered  herself  and  trudged  on  once  more  along 
the  lonely  road. 

"  How  like  their  god  is  to  them !"  she  thought ;  the 
wooden  crucifix  was  the  type  of  her  persecutors  ;  of 
those  who  flouted  and  mocked  her,  who  flung  and  pierced 
her  as  a  witeh ;  who  cursed  her  because  she  was  not  of 
their  people.  The  cross  was  the  hatred  of  the  world 
incarnated  to  her;  it  was  in  Christ's  name  that  Mar- 
cellin's  corpse  had  been  cast  on  the  dung  and  in  the 
ditch  ;  it  was  in  Christ's  name  that  the  women  had 
avenged  on  her  the  pity  which  she  had  shown  to  Manon 
Dax ;  it  was  in  Christ's  name  that  Flamma  scourged  her 
because  she  would  not  pass  rotten  figs  for  sweet. 

For  the  name  of  Christ  is  used  to  cover  every  crime,  by 
the  peasant  who  cheats  his  neighbor  of  a  copper  coin,  as 
by  the  sovereign  who  massacres  a  nation  for  a  throne. 

She  left  the  black  cross  reared  there  against  the  rushes, 
and  plodded  on  through  sand  and  rain  and  flood,  bearing 
her  load : — in  Christ's  name  they  would  have  seized  her 
as  a  thief. 

The  storm  abated  a  little,  and  every  now  and  then  a 
gleam  of  moonlight  was  shed  upon  the  flooded  meadows. 
She  gained  the  base  of  the  tower,  and,  by  means  of  the 
length  of  rope,  let  by  degrees  the  firewood  and  the  basket 
through  the  open  portion  of  the  window  on  to  the  floor 
below,  then  again  followed  them  herself. 

Her  heart  thrilled  as  she  entered. 

Her  first  glance  to  the  desolate  hearth  showed  her  that 
the  hours  of  her  absence  had  brought  no  change  there. 


FOLLE-FARWE.  195 

The  gods  had  not  kept  faith  with  her,  they  had  not  raised 
him  from  the  dead. 

"  They  have  left  it  all  to  me !"  she  thought,  with  a 
strange  sweet  yearning  in  her  heart  over  this  life  -that 
she  had  bought  with  her  own. 

She  first  flung. the  fagots  and  brushwood  on  the  hearth, 
and  set  them  on  fire  to  burn,  fanned  by  the  breath  of  the 
wind.  Then  she  poured  out  a  little  of  the  wine,  and 
kneeled  down  by  him,  and  forced  it  drop  by  drop  through 
his  colorless  lips,  raising  his  head  upon  her  as  she 
kneeled. 

The  wine  was  pure  and  old ;  it  suffused  his  attenuated 
frame  as  with  a  rush  of  now  blood ;  under  her  hand  his 
heart  beat  with  firmer  and  quicker  movement.  She  broke 
bread  in  the  wine,  and  put  the  soaked  morsels  to  his 
mouth,  as  softly  as  she  would  have  fed  some  little  shiver- 
ing bird  made  nestless  by  the  hurricane. 

He  was  not  conscious  yet,  but  he  swallowed  what  she 
held  to  him,  without  knowing  what  he  did;  a  slight 
warmth  gradually  spread  over  his  limbs ;  a  strong  shud- 
der shook  him. 

His  eyes  looked  dully  at  her  through  a  film  of  exhaus- 
tion and  of  sleep. 

"  J'avais  quelque  chose  la !"  he  muttered,  incoherently, 
his  voice  rattling  in  his  hollow  chest,  as  he  raised  him- 
self a  little  on  one  arm. 

"  J'avais  quelque  chose  la!"  and  with  a  sigh  he  fell 
back  once  more — his  head  tossing  in  uneasiness  from  side 
to  side. 

Amidst  the  heat  and  mists  of  his  aching  brain,  one 
thought  remained  with  him — that  he  had  created  things 
greater  than  himself,  and  that  he  died  like  a  dog,  power- 
less to  save  them. 

The  saddest  dying  words  that  the  air  ever  bare  on  its 
breath — the  one  bitter  vain  regret  of  every  genius  that 
the  common  herds  of  men  stamp  out  as  they  slay  their 
mad  cattle  or  their  drunken  mobs — stayed  on  the  blurred 
remembrance  of  his  brain,  which,  in  its  stupor  and  its 
helplessness,  still  knew  that  once  it  had  been  strong  to 
create — that  once  it  had  been  clear  to  record — that  once 
it  had  dreamed  the  dreams  which  save  men  from  the  life 


196  FOLLE-FARINE. 

of  the  swine — that  once  it  had  told  to  the  world  the  truth 
divested  of  lies, — and  that  none  had  seen,  none  had  lis- 
tened, none  had  believed. 

There  is  no  more  terrible  woe  upon  earth  than  the  woe 
of  the  stricken  brain,  which  remembers  the  days  of  its 
strength,  the  living  light  of  its  reason,  the  sunrise  of  its 
proud  intelligence,  and  knows  that  all  these  have  passed 
away  like  a  tale  that  is  told  ;  like  a  year  that  is  spent; 
like  an  arrow  that  is  shot  to  the  stars,  and  flies  aloft,  and 
falls  in  a  swamp ;  like  a  fruit  that  is  too  well  loved  of  the 
sun,  and  so,  oversoon  ripe,  is  dropped  from  the  tree  and 
forgot  on  the  grasses,  dead  to  all  joys  of  the  dawn  and 
the  noon  and  the  summer,  but  alive  to  the  sting  of  the 
wasp,  to  the  fret  of  the  aphis,  to  the  burn  of  the  drought, 
to  the  theft  of  the  parasite. 

She  only  dimly  understood,  aud  yet  she  was  smitten 
with  awe  and  reverence  at  that  endless  grief  which  had 
no  taint  of  cowardice  upon  it,  but  was  pure  as  the 
patriot's  despair,  impersonal  as  the  prophet's  agony. 

For  the  first  time  the  mind  in  her  consciously  awoke. 

For  the  first  time  she  heard  a  human  mind  find  voice 
even  in  its  stupor  aud  its  wretchedness  to  cry  aloud,  in 
reproach  to  its  unknown  Creator  : 

"I  am  yours!  Shall  I  perish  with  the  body?  Why 
have  bade  me  desire  the  light  and  seek  it,  if  forever  you 
must  thrust  me  into  the  darkness  of  negation  ?  Shall  I 
be  Nothing  like  the  muscle  that  rots,  like  the  bones  that 
crumble,  like  the  flesh  that  turns  to  ashes,  and  blow  in  a 
film  on  the  winds  ?  Shall  I  die  so  ?  I  ? — the  mind  of  a 
man,  the  breath  of  a  god?" 

Time  went  by;  the  chimes  from  the  cathedral  tolled 
dully  through  the  darkness  over  the  expanse  of  the  flood. 

The  light  from  the  burning  wood  shone  redly  and  fit- 
fully. The  sigh  and  moan  of  the  tossed  rushes  and  of 
the  water-birds,  awakened  and  afraid,  came  from  the 
outer  world  on  the  winds  that  blew  through  the  desola- 
tion of  the  haunted  chamber.  Gray  owls  flew  in  the 
high  roof,  taking  refuge  from  the  night.  Rats  hurried, 
noiseless  and  eager,  over  the  stones  of  the  floor,  seeking 
stray  grains  that  fell  through  the  rafters  from  the  grana- 
ries above. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  19? 

She  noticed  none  of  these  ;  she  never  looked  up  nor 
around ;  all  she  heard  was  the  throb  of  the  delirious 
words  on  the  silence,  all  she  saw  was  the  human  face  in 
the  clouded  light  through  the  smoke  from  the  hearth. 

The  glow  of  the  fire  shone  on  the  bowed  head  of 
Thanatos,  the  laughing  eyes  of  Pan  ;  Hermes'  fair  cold 
derisive  face,  and  the  splendor  of  the  Lykegenes  toiling 
in  the  ropes  that  bound  him  to  the  mill-stones  to  grind 
bread  for  the  mortal  appetites  and  the  ineloquent  lips  of 
men. 

But  at  the  gods  she  barely  looked ;  her  eyes  were  bent 
upon  the  human  form  before  her.  She  crouched  beside  him, 
half  kneeling  and  half  sitting:  her  clothes  were  drenched, 
the  fire  scorched,  the  draughts  of  the  air  froze  her ;  she 
had  neither  eaten  nor  drunk  since  the  noon  of  the  day; 
\pt  she  had  no  other  remembrance  than  of  this  life  which 
had  the  beauty  of  the  sun-king  and  the  misery  of  the 
beggar. 

He  lay  long  restless,  unconscious,  muttering  strange 
sad  words,  at  times  of  sense,  at  times  of  folly,  but  always, 
whether  lucid  or  delirous,  words  of  a  passionate  rebellion 
against  his  fate,  a  despairing  lament  for  the  soul  in  him 
that  would  be  with  the  body  quenched. 

After  awhile  the  feverish  mutterings  of  his  voice  were 
lower  and  less  frequent ;  his  eyes  seemed  to  become  sen- 
sible of  the  glare  of  the  fire,  and  to  contract  and  close  in 
a  more  conscious  pain ;  after  a  yet  longer  time  he  ceased 
to  stir  so  restlessly,  ceased  to  sigh  and  shudder,  and  he 
grew  quite  still ;  his  breath  came  tranquilly,  his  head  fell 
back,  he  sank  to  a  deep  sleep. 

The  personal  fears,  the  womanly  terrors,  which  would 
have  assailed  creatures  at  once  less  savage  and  less  inno- 
cent never  moved  her  for  an  instant.  That  there  was  any 
strangeness  in  her  position,  any  peril  in  this  solitude,  she 
never  dreamed.  Her  heart,  bold  with  the  blood  of  Taric, 
could  know  no  physical  fear ;  and  her  mind  at  once  igno- 
rant and  visionary,  her  temper  at  once  fierce  and  unselfish, 
kept  from  her  all  thought  of  those  suspicions  which  would 
fall  on  her,  and  chastise  an  act  like  hers ;  suspicions  such 
as  would  have  made  a  woman  less  pure  and  less  daunt- 
less tremble  at  that  lonely  house,  that  night  of  storm, 

17* 


198  FOLLE-FA  RINK 

that  unknown  fate  which  she  had  taken  into  her  own 
hands,  unwitting  and  unheeding  whether  good  or  evil 
might  be  the  issue  thereof. 

To  her  he  was  beautiful,  he  suffered,  she  had  saved  him 
from  death,  and  he  was  hers :  and  this  was  all  that  she 
remembered.  She  dealt  with  him  as  she  would  have 
done  with  some  forest  beast  or  bird  that  she  should  have 
found  frozen  in  the  woods  of  winter. 

His  head  had  fallen  on  her,  and  she  crouched  un- 
wearied in  the  posture  that  gave  him  easiest  rest. 

With  a  touch  so  soft  that  it  could  not  awaken  him,  she 
stroked  the  lusterless  gold  of  his  hair,  and  from  time  to 
time  felt  for  the  inaudible  beating  of  his  heart. 

Innumerable  dreams,  shapeless,  delicious,  swept 
through  her  brain,  like  the  echoes  of  some  music, 
faint  yet  unutterably  sweet,  that  half  arouses  and  half 
soothes  some  sleeper  in  a  gray  drowsy  summer  dawn. 

For  the  first  time  since  the  melodies  of  Phratos  had 
died  forever  from  off  her  ear  she  was  happy. 

She  did  not  ask  wherefore, — neither  of  herself  or  of 
the  gods  did  she  question  whence  came  this  wonder- 
flower  of  her  nameless  joy. 

She  "only  sat  quiet,  and  let  the  hours  drift  by,  and 
watched  him  as  he  slept,  and  was  content. 

So  the  hours  passed. 

Whilst  yet  it  seemed  night  still,  the  silence  trembled 
with  the  pipe  of  waking  birds,  the  darkness  quivered  with 
the  pale  first  rays  of  dawn. 

Over  the  flood  and  the  fields  the  first  light  broke.  From 
the  unseen  world  behind  the  mist,  faint  bells  rang  in  the 
coming  day. 

He  moved  in  his  sleep,  and  his  eyes  unclosed,  and 
looked  at  her  face  as  it  hung  above  him,  like  some  drooped 
rose  that  was  heavy  with  the  too  great  sweetness  of  a 
summer  shower. 

It  was  but  the  gaze  of  a  moment,  and  his  lids  dropped 
again,  weighted  with  the  intense  weariness  of  a  slumber 
that  held  all  his  senses  close  in  its  leaden  chains.  But 
the  glance,  brief  though  it  was,  had  been  conscious; — 
under  it  a  sudden  flush  passed  over  her,  a  sudden  thrill 
stirred  in  her,  as  the  life  stirs  in  the  young  trees  at  the 


FOLLE-FARINE.  199 

near  coming  of  the  spring.  For  the  first  time  since  her 
birth  she  became  wholly  human. 

A  sharp  terror  made  her  tremble  like  a  leaf;  she  put 
his  head  softly  from  her  on  the  ground,  and  rose,  quiver- 
ing, to  her  feet. 

It  was  not  the  gods  she  feared,  it  was  herself. 

She  had  never  once  known  that  she  had  beauty,  more 
than  the  flower  knows  it  blowing  on  the  wind.  She  had 
passed  through  the  crowds  of  fair  and  market,  not  know- 
ing why  the  youths  looked  after  her  with  cruel  eyes  all 
aglow.  She  had  walked  through  them,  indifferent  and 
unconscious,  thinking  that  they  wanted  to  hunt  her  down 
as  an  unclean  beast,  and  dared  not,  because  her  teeth 
were  strong. 

She  had  taken  a  vague  pleasure  in  the  supple  grace  of 
her  own  form,  as  she  had  seen  it  mirrored  in  some  wood- 
land pool  where  she  had  bathed  amidst  the  water-lilies, 
but  it  had  been  only  such  an  instinctive  and  unstudied 
pleasure  as  the  swan  takes  in  seeing  her  silver  breast 
shine  back  to  her,  on  the  glassy  current  adown  which  she 
sails. 

Now, — as  she  rose  and  stood,  as  the  dawn  broke,  beside 
him,  on  the  hearth,  and  heard  the  birds'  first  waking  notes, 
that  told  her  the  sun  was  even  then  touching  the  edge  of 
the  veiled  world  to  light,  a  hot  shame  smote  her,  and  the 
womanhood  in  her  woke. 

She  looked  down  on  herself  and  saw  that  her  soaked 
skirts  were  knotted  above  her  knees,  as  she  had  bound 
them  when  she  had  leaped  from  the  boat's  side  ;  that  her 
limbs  were  wet  and  glistening  with  river  water,  and  the 
moisture  from  the  grasses,  and  the  sand  and  shingle 
of  the  shore;  and  that  the  linen  of  her  vest,  threadbare 
with  age,  left  her  arms  bare,  and  showed  through  its  rents 
the  gleam  of  her  warm  brown  skiu  and  the  curves  of  her 
shining  shoulders. 

A  sudden  horror  came  upon  her,  lest  he  should  awake 
again  and  see  her  as  she  was;  —  wet,  miserable,  half- 
clothed,  wind-tossed  like  the  rushes,  outcast  and  ashamed. 

She  did  not  know  that  she  had  beauty  in  her  ;  she  did  not 
know  that  even  as  she  was,  she  had  an  exquisitely  savage 
grace,  as  storm-birds  have  in  theirs  against  the  thunder- 


200  FOLLE-FAR1NE. 

cloud  and  the  lightning  blaze,  of  their  water-world  in 
tempest. 

She  felt  a  sudden  shrinking  from  all  chance  of  his 
clearer  and  more  conscious  gaze  ;  a  sudden  shy  dread  and 
longing  to  hide  herself  under  the  earth,  or  take  refuge  in 
the  depth  of  the  waters,  rather  than  meet  those  eyes  to 
which  she  had  given  back  the  light  of  life  east  on  her  in 
abhorrence  and  in  scorn ;— and  that  he  could  have  any 
other  look,  for  her,  she  had  no  thought. 

She  had  been  an  outcast  among  an  alien  people  too 
long  to  dream  that  any  human  love  could  ever  fall  on  her. 
She  had  been  too  long  cursed  by  every  tongue,  to  dream 
that  any  human  voice  could  ever  arise  in  honor  or  in 
welcome  to  a  thing  so  despised  arid  criminal  as  she. 

For  the  gift  which  she  had  given  this  man,  too,  would 
curse  her  ; — that  she  had  known  when  she  had  offered  it. 

She  drew  her  rude  garments  closer,  and  stole  away  with 
velvet  footfall,  through  the  twilight  of  the  dawn  ;  her  head 
hung  down,  and  her  face  was  flushed  as  with  some  great 
guilt. 

With  the  rising  of  the  day,  all  her  new  joy  was  banished. 

With  the  waking  of  the  world,  all  her  dreams  shrank 
back  into  secrecy  and  shame. 

The  mere  timid  song  of  the  linnet  in  the  leafless 
bushes  seemed  sharp  on  her  ear,  calling  on  her  to  rise 
and  go  forth  to  her  work,  as  the  creature  of  toil,  of  exile, 
of  namelessness,  and  of  despair,  that  men  had  made  her. 

At  the  casement,  she  turned  and  cast  one  long  but 
lingering  glance  upon  him  where  he  slept;  then  once 
more  she  launched  herself  into  the  dusky  and  watery 
mists  of  the  cold  dawn. 

She  had  made  no  more  sound  in  her  passing  than  a 
bird  makes  in  her  flight. 

The  sleeper  never  stirred,  but  dreamed  on  motionless, 
in  the  darkness  and  the  silence,  and  the  drowsy  warmth. 

He  dreamed,  indeed,  of  a  woman's  form  half  bare, 
golden  of  hue  like  a  fruit  of  the  south,  blue  veined  and 
flushed  to  changing  rose  heats,  like  an  opal's  lire ;  with 
limbs  strong  and  yet  slender,  gleaming  wet  with  water, 
and  brown  arched  feet  all  shining  with  silvery  sands ; 
with  mystical  eyes,  black  as  night  and  amorous-lidded, 


FOLLE-FARINE.  20  L 

and  a  mouth  like  the  half-closed  bud  of  a  flower,  which 
sighing  seemed  to  breathe  upon  him  all  the  fragrance  of 
dim  cedar-woods  shrouded  in  summer  rains,  of  honey- 
weighted  heather  blown  by  moorland  winds,  of  almond 
blossoms  tossed  like  snow  against  a  purple  sea;  of  all 
things  air-born,  sun-fed,  fair  and  free. 

But  he  saw  these  only  as  in  a  dream  ;  and,  as  a  dream, 
when  he  awakened  they  had  passed. 

Though  still  dark  from  heavy  clouds,  the  dawn  grew 
into  morning  as  she  went  noiselessly  away  over  the  gray 
sands,  the  wet  shore-paths,  the  sighing  rushes. 

The  river-meadows  were  all  flooded,  and  on  the  oppo- 
site banks  the  road  was  impassable ;  but  on  her  side  she 
could  still  find  footing,  for  the  ground  there  had  a  steeper 
rise,  and  the  swollen  tide  had  not  reached  in  any  public 
roadway  too  high  for  her  to  wade,  or  draw  herself  by  the 
half-merged  bushes,  through  it  on  the  homeward  tracks 
to  Ypres. 

The  low  sun  was  hidden  in  a  veil  of  water.  The  old 
convent  bells  of  all  the  country-side  sang  through  the 
mists.  The  day  was  still  young  ;  but  the  life  of  the  soil 
and  the  stream  was  waking  as  the  birds  were.  Boats 
went  down  the  current,  bearing  a  sad  freightage  of  sheep 
drowned  in  the  night,  and  of  ruined  peasants,  whose  little 
wealth  of  stack  and  henhouse  had  been  swept  down  by 
the  unlooked-for  tide. 

From  the  distant  banks,  the  voices  of  women  came 
muffled  through  the  fog,  weeping  and  wailing  for  some 
lost  lamb,  choked  by  the  water  in  its  fold,  or  some  pretty 
breadth  of  garden  just  fragrant  with  snowdrops  and  with 
violets,  that  had  been  laid  desolate  and  washed  away. 

Through  the  clouds  of  vapor  that  curled  in  a  deuse 
opaque  smoke  from  the  wet  earth,  there  loomed  th,e  dusky 
shapes  of  oxen  ;  their  belled  horns  sending  forth  a  pleas- 
ant music  from  the  gloom.  On  the  air,  there  was  a  sweet 
damp  odor  from  soaked  grasses  and  upturned  sods,  from 
the  breath  of  the  herds  lowing  hock  deep  in  water,  from 
the  green  knots  of  broken  primrose  roots  sailing  by  on 
the  brown,  rough  river. 

A  dying  bush  of  gray  lavender  swept  by  on  the  stream  ; 
it  h^d  the  fresh  moulds  of  its  lost  garden-home  still  about 


202  FOLLE-FARWE. 

it,  and  in  its. stems  a  robin  had  built  her  little  nest;  the 
nest  streamed  in  tatters  and  ruin  on  the  wind,  the  robin 
flew  above  the  wreck,  fluttering  and  uttering  shrill  notes 
of  woe. 

Folle-Farine  saw  nothing. 

She  held  on  her  way  blindly,  mutely,  mechanically,  by 
sheer  force  of  long  habit.  Her  mind  was  in  a  trance  ; 
she  was  insensible  of  pain  or  cold,  of  hunger  or  fever,  of 
time  or  place. 

Yet  she  went  straight  home,  as  the  horse  being  blinded 
will  do,  to  the  place  where  its  patience  and  fealty  have 
never  been  recompensed  with  any  other  thing  than  blows. 

As  she  had  groped  her  way  through  the  gloom  of  the 
night,  and  found  it,  though  the  light  of  the  roadside 
Christ  had  been  turned  from  her,  so  in  the  same  blind 
manner  she  had  groped  her  way  to  her  own  conceptions 
of  honesty  and  duty.  She  hated  the  bitter  and  cruel  old 
man,  with  a  passion  fierce  aud  enduring  that  nothing 
could  have  changed;  yet  all  the  same  she  served  him 
faithfully.  This  was  an  untamed  animal  indeed,  that  he 
had  yoked  to  his  plowshare;  but  she  did  her  work  loyally 
and  doggedly ;  and  whenever  she  had  shaken  her  neck 
free  of  the  yoke,  she  returned  and  thrust  her  head  through 
it  again,  whether  he  scourged  her  back  to  it  or  not. 

It  was  partially  from  the  force  of  habit  which  is  strong 
upon  all  creatures ;  it  was  partially  from  a  vague  instinct 
in  her  to  work  out  her  right  to  the  begrudged  shelter 
which  she  received,  and  not  to  be  beholden  for  it  for  one 
single  hour  to  any  charity. 

The  mill  was  at  work  in  the  twilight  when  she  reached  it. 

Claudis  Flamma  screamed  at  her  from  the  open  door 
of  the  loft,  where  he  was  weighing  corn  for  the  grinding. 

"  You  have  been  away  all  night  long!"  he  cried  to  her. 

She  was  silent ;  standing  below  in  the  wet  garden. 

He  cast  a  foul  word  at  her,  new  upon  his  lips.  She 
was  silent  all  the  same  ;  her  arms  crossed  on  her  breast, 
her  head  bent. 

"  Where  is  the  boat  ? — that  is  worth  more  than  your 
body.     And  soul  you  have  none." 

She  raised  her  head  and  looked  upward. 

11 1  have  lost  the  boat." 


FOLLE-FARINE.  203 

She  thought  that,  very  likely,  he  would  kill  her  for  it. 
Once  when  she  had  lost  an  osier  basket,  not  a  hundredth 
part  the  cost  of  this  vessel,  he  had  beaten  her  till  every 
bone  in  her  frame  had  seemed  broken  for  many  a  week. 
But  she  looked  up  quietly  there  among  the  dripping 
bushes  and  the  cheerless  grassy  ways. 

That  she  never  told  a  lie  he  above  in  the  loft  knew  by 
long  proof;  but  this  was  in  his  sight  only  on  a  piece 
with  the  strength  born  in  her  from  the  devil ;  the  devil 
had  in  all  ages  told  so  many  truths  to  the  confusion  of 
the  saints  God. 

"  Drifted  where  ?" 

"I  do  not  know— on  the  face  of  the  flood, — with  the 
tide." 

"You  had  left  it  loose." 

u  I  got  out  to  push  it  off  the  sand.  It  had  grounded. 
I  forgot  it.     It  went  adrift." 

"  What  foul  thing  were  you  at  meanwhile  ?" 

She  was  silent. 

11  If  you  do  not  say,  I  will  cut  your  heart  out  with  a 
hundred  stripes  !" 

"You  can." 

"  I  can  !  You  shall  know  truly  that  I  can.  Go,  get 
the  boat — find  it  above  or  below  water — or  to  the-town 
prison  you  go  as  a  thief." 

The  word  smote  her  with  a  sudden  pang. 

For  the  first  time  her  courage  failed  her.  She  turned 
and  went  in  silence  at  his  bidding. 

In  the  wet  daybreak,  through  the  swollen  pools  and  the 
soaked  thickets,  she  searched  for  the  lost  vessel  ;  know- 
ing well  that  it  would  be  scarcely  less  than  a  miracle 
which  could  restore  it  to  her;  and  that  the  god  upon 
the  cross  worked  no  miracles  for  her ; — a  child  of  sin. 

For  several  hours  she  searched  ;  hungry,  drenched 
with  water,  ready  to  drop  with  exhaustion,  as  she  was 
used  to  see  the  overdriven  cattle  sink  upon  the  road. 
She  passed  many  peasants ;  women  on  their  mules,  men 
in  their  barges,  children  searching  for  such  flotsam  and 
jetsam  as  might  have  been  flung  upon  the  land  from  the 
little  flooded  gardens  and  the  few  riverside  cabins  that 
had  been  invaded  in  the  night. 


204  FOLLE-FARINE. 

She  asked  tidings  of  the  missing  treasure  from  none 
of  these.  What  she  could  not  do  for  herself,  it  never 
occurred  to  her  that  others  could  do  for  her.  It  was  an 
ignorance  that  was  strength.  At  length,  to  her  amaze,  she 
found  it ;  saved  for  her  by  the  branches  of  a  young  tree, 
which  being  blown  down  had  fallen  into  the  stream,  and 
had  caught  the  boat  hard  and  fast  as  in  a  net. 

At  peril  to  her  life,  she  dislodged  it,  with  infinite  labor, 
from  the  entanglement  of  the  boughs  ;  and  at  scarce  less 
peril,  rowed  on  her  homeward  way  upon  the  swollen  force 
of  the  turbid  river  ;  full  against  the  tide  which  again  was 
flowing  inland,  from  the  sea  that  beat  the  bar,  away  to 
the  northward,  in  the  full  sunrise. 

It  was  far  on  in  the  forenoon  as  she  drew  near  the 
orchards  of  Ypres,  brown  in  their  leaflessness,  and  with 
gray  lichens  blowing  from  their  boughs,  like  hoary 
beards  of  trembling  paupers  shaking  in  the  icy  breaths 
of  charity. 

She  saw  that  Claudis  Flamma-was  at  work  amidst  his 
trees,  pruning  and  delving  in  the  red  and  chilly  day. 

She  went  up  the  winding  stairs,  planks  green  and 
slippery  with  wet  river  weeds,  which  led  straight  through 
the  apple  orchards  to  the  mill. 

"  I  have  found  the  boat,"  she  said,  standing  before 
him  ;  her  voice  was  faint  and  very  tired,  her  whole  body 
drooped  with  fatigue,  her  head  for  once  was  bowed. 

He  turned  with  his  billhook  in  his  hand.  There  was 
a  leap  of  gladness  at  his  heart ;  the  miser's  gladness  over 
recovered  treasure;  but  he  showed  such  weakness  neither 
in  his  eye  nor  words. 

"  It  is  well  for  you  that  you  have,"  he  said  with  bitter 
meaning.     "  I  will  spare  you  half  the  stripes :— strip." 

Without  a  word  of  remonstrance,  standing  before  him 
in  the  gray  shadow  of  the  lichens,  and  the  red  mists  of 
the  morning,  she  pushed  the  rough  garments  from  her 
breast  and  shoulders,  and  vanquishing  her  weakness, 
drew  herself  erect  to  receive  the  familiar  chastisement. 

"I  am  guilty— this  time,"  she  said  to  herself  as  the 
lash  fell : — she  was  thinking  of  her  theft. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  205 


CHAPTER    IT. 


A  score  of  years  before,  in  a  valley  of  the  far  north,  a 
group  of  eager  and  silent  listeners  stood  gathered  about 
one  man,  who  spoke  aloud  with  fervent  and  rapturous 
oratory. 

It  was  in  the  green  Norwegian  spring,  when  the 
silence  of  the  winter  world  had  given  way  to  a  million 
sounds  of  waking  life  from  budding  leaves  and  nesting 
birds,  and  melting  torrents  and  warm  winds  fanning  the 
tender  primrose  into  being,  and  wooing  the  red  alpine 
rose  to  blossom. 

The  little  valley  was  peopled  by  a  hardy  race  of  herds- 
men and  of  fishers ;  men  who  kept  their  goat-flocks  on 
the  steep  sides  of  the  mountains,  or  went  down  to  the 
deep  waters  in  search  of  a  scanty  subsistence.  But  thoy 
were  a  people  simple,  noble,  grave,  even  in  a  manner  heroic 
and  poetic,  a  people  nurtured  on  the  old  grand  songs  of  a 
mighty  past,  and  holding  a  pure  faith  in  the  traditions  of 
a  great  sea-sovereignty.  They  listened,  breathless,  to 
the  man  who  addressed  them,  raised  on  a  tribune  of 
rough  rock,  and  facing  the  ocean,  where  it  stretched  at 
the  northward  end  of  the  vale;  a  man  peasant-born  him- 
self, but  gifted  with  a  native  eloquence,  half-poet,  half- 
preacher;  fanatic  and  enthusiast;  one  who  held  it  as 
his  errand  to  go  to  and  fro  the  land,  raising  his  voice 
against  the  powers  of  the  world,  and  of  wealth,  and  who 
spoke  against  these  with  a  fervor  and  force  which,  to  the 
unlearned  and  impressionable  multitudes  that  heard  him, 
seemed  the  voice  of  a  genius  heaven-sent. 

When  a  boy  he  had  been  a  shepherd,  and  dreaming  in 
the  loneliness  of  the  mountains,  and  by  the  side  of  the 
deep  hill-lakes  far  away  from  any  sound  or  steps  of 
human  life,  a  madness,  innocent,  and  in  its  way  beautiful, 
had  come  upon  him. 

He  believed  himself  born  to  carry  the  message  of  grace 
to  the  nations;  and  to  raise  his  voice  up  against  those 
passions  whose  fury  had  never  assailed  him,  and  against 

18 


206  FOLLE-FARINE. 

those  riches  whose  sweetness  he  had  never  tasted.  So 
he  had  wandered  from  city  to  city,  from  village  to  vil- 
lage ;  mocked  in  some  places,  revered  in  others  ;  protest- 
ing always  against  the  dominion  of  wealth,  and  speaking 
with  a  strange  pathos  and  poetry  which  thrilled  the  hearts 
of  his  listeners,  and  had  almost  in  it,  at  times,  the  menace 
and  the  mystery  of  a  prophet's  upbraiding. 

He  lived  very  poorly;  he  was  gentle  as  a  child;  he 
was  a  cripple  and  very  feeble ;  he  drank  at  the  wavside 
rills  with  the  dogs;  he  lay  down  on  the  open  fields 
with  the  cattle;  yet  he  had  a  power  in  him  that  had  its 
sway  over  the  people,  and  held  the  scoffers  and  the 
jesters  quiet  under  the  spell  of  his  tender  and  flutelike 
tones. 

Raised  above  the  little  throng  upon  the  bare  red  rock, 
with  the  vast  green  fields  and  dim  pine-woods  stretching 
round  him  as  far  as  his  eye  could  reach,  he  preached 
now  to  the  groups  of  fishers  and  herdsmen  and  foresters 
and  hunters  ;  protesting  to  this  simple  people  against  the 
force  of  wealth,  and  the  lust  of  possession,  as  though  he 
preached  to  princes  and  to  conquerors.  He  told  them  of 
what  he  had  seen  in  the  great  cities  through  which  he 
had  wandered ;  of  the  corruption  and  the  vileness  and 
the  wantonness;  of  the  greed  in  which  the  days  and  the 
years  of  men's  lives  were  spent ;  of  the  amassing  of  riches 
for  which  alone  the  nations  cared,  so  that  all  loveliness, 
all  simplicity,  all  high  endeavor,  all  innocent  pastime, 
were  abjured  and  derided  among  them.  And  his  voice 
was  sweet  and  full  as  the  swell  of  music  as  he  spoke  to 
them,  telling  them  one  of  the  many  fables  and  legends,  of 
which  he  had  gathered  a  full  harvest,  in  the  many  lands 
that  had  felt  his  footsteps. 

This  was  the  parable  he  told  them  that  day,  whilst  the 
rude  toilers  of  the  forests  and  the  ocean  stood  quiet  as 
little  children,  hearkening  with  upturned  faces  and  bated 
breath,  as  the  sun  went  down  behind  the  purple  pines : 

"  There  lived  once  in  the  East,  a  great  king ;  he  dwelt 
far  away,  among  the  fragrant  fields  of  roses,  and  in  the 
light  of  suns  that  never  set. 

"  He  was  young,  he  was  beloved,  he  was  fair  of  face  and 
form;  and  the  people  as  they  hewed  stone  or  brought 


FOLLE-FARINE.  20T 

water,  said  among  themselves,  '  Verily,  this  man  is  as 
a  god ;  he  goes  where  he  lists,  and  he  lies  still  or  rises  up 
as  he  pleases  ;  and  all  fruits  off  all  lands  are  culled  for 
him  ;  aud  his  nights  are  nights  of  gladness,  and  his  days, 
when  they  dawn,  are  all  his  to  sleep  through  or  spend  as 
he  wills.'  But  the  people  were  wrong.  For  this  king 
was  weary  of  his  life. 

"  His  buckler  was  sown  with  gems,  but  his  heart  beneath 
it  was  sore.  For  he  had  been  long  bitterly  harassed  by 
foes  who  descended  upon  him  as  wolves  from  the  hills  in 
their  hunger,  and  plagued  with  heavy  wars  and  with  bad 
rice  harvests,  and  with  many  troubles  to  his  nation  that 
kept  it  very  poor,  and  forbade  him  to  finish  the  building 
of  new  marble  palaces,  and  the  making  of  fresh  gardens 
of  delight,  in  which  his  heart  was  set.  So  he  being 
weary  of  a  barren  land  and  of  an  empty  treasury,  with 
all  his  might  prayed  to  the  gods  that  all  he  touched  might 
turn  to  gold,  even  as  he  had  heard  had  happened  to  some 
magician  long  before  in  other  ages.  And  the  gods  gave 
him  the  thing  he  craved:  and  his  treasury  overflowed. 
No  king  had  ever  been  so  rich,  as  this  king  now  became 
in  the  short  space  of  a  single  summer-day. 

"  But  it  was  bought  with  a  price. 

"  When  he  stretched  out  his  hand  to  gather  the  rose  that 
blossomed  in  his  path,  a  golden  flower  scentless  and  stiff 
was  all  he  grasped.  When  he  called  to  him  the,  carrier- 
dove  that  sped  with  a  scroll  of  love-#ords  across  the  mount- 
ains, the  bird  sank  on  his  breast  a  carven  piece  of  metal. 
When  he  was  athirst  aud  shouted  to  his  cup-bearer  for 
drink,  the  red  wine  ran  a  stream  of  molten  gold.  When 
he  would  fain  have  eaten,  the  pulse  and  the  pomegranate 
grew  alike  to  gold  between  his  teeth.  And  at  eventide 
when  he  sought  the  silent  chambers  of  his  harem,  saying, 
1  Here  at  least  shall  I  find  rest,'  and  bent  his  steps  to  the 
couch  whereon  his  best-beloved  slave  was  sleeping,  a 
statue  of  gold  was  all  he  drew  into  his  eager  arms,  and 
cold  shut  lips  of  sculptured  gold  were  all  that  met  his 
own. 

"That  night  the  great  king  slew  himself,  unable  any 
more  to  bear  this  agony,  since  all  around  him  was  deso- 
lation, even  though  all  around  him  was  wealth. 


208  FOLLE-FAR1NE. 

"Now  the  world  is  too  like  that  king,  and  in  its  greed  of 
gold  it  will  barter  its  life  away. 

"  Look  you,— -this  thing  is  certain :  I  say  that  the  world 
will  perish,  even  as  that  king  perished,  slain  as  he  was 
slam,  by  the  curse  of  its  own  fulfilled  desire. 

"The  future  of  the  world  is  written.  For  God  has 
granted  their  prayer  to  men.  He  has  made  them  rich 
and  their  riches  shall  kill  them. 

"  When  all  green  places  shall  have  been  destroyed  in  the 
builder's  lust  of  gain:— when  all  the  lands  are  but  mount- 
ains of  brick,  and  piles  of  wood  and  iron  .-—when  there  is 
no  moisture  anywhere;    and  no  rain  ever  falls:— when 
the  sky  is  a  vault  of  smoke ;  and  all  the  rivers  rank  with 
poison:— when  forest  and  stream,  and  moor  and  meadow, 
and  all  the  old  green  wayside  beauty  are  things  vanished 
and  forgotten  :— when  every  gentle  timid  thing  of  brake 
and  bush,  of  air  and  water,  has  been  killed,  because  it 
robbed  them  of  a  berry  or  a  fruit  .-—when  the  earth  is  one 
vast  city,  whose  young  children  behold  neither  the  green  of 
the  field,  nor  the  blue  of  the  sky,  and  hear  no  song  but  the 
hiss  of  the  steam,  and  know  no  music  but  the  roar  of  the 
furnace :— when  the  old  sweet  silence  of  the  country-side 
and  the  old  sweet  sounds  of  waking  birds,  and  the  old 
sweet  fall  of  summer  showers,  and  the  grace  of  a  hedge- 
row bough,  and  the  glow  of  the  purple  heather,  and  the 
note  of  the  cuckoo  and  cricket,  and  the  freedom  of  waste 
and  of  woodland,  are  all  things  dead,  and  remembered  of 
no  man :— then  the  world,  like  the  Eastern  king,  will  perish 
miserably  of  famine  and  of  drought,  with  gold  in  its  stiff- 
ened hands,  and  gold  in  its  withered  lips,  and  gold  every- 
where :— gold  that  the  people  can  neither  eat  nor  drink, 
gold  that  cares  nothing  for  them,  but  mocks  them  hor- 
ribly :— gold  for  which  their  fathers  sold  peace  and  health 
holiness  and  liberty  :— gold  that  is  one  vast  grave." 

His  voice  sank,  and  the  silence  that  followed  was  only 
tilled  with  the  sound  of  the  winds  in  the  pine-woods  and 
the  sound  of  the  sea  on  the  shore. 

The  people  were  very  still  and  afraid  ;  for  it  seemed  to 
them  that  he  had  spoken  as  prophets  speak,  and  that  his 
words  were  the  words  of  truth. 

Suddenly  on  the   awe-stricken  silence  an   answering 


FOLLE-FARINE.  209 

voice  rang,  clear,  scornful,  bold,  and  with  the  eager  and 
fearless  defiance  of  youth  : 

11  If  I  had  been  that  king,  I  would  not  have  cared  for 
woman,  or  bird,  or  rose.  I  would  have  lived  long  enough 
to  enrich  my  nation,  and  mass  my  armies,  and  die  a  con- 
queror. What  would  the  rest  have  mattered  ?  You  are 
mad,  O  Preacher  1  to  rail  against  gold.  You  flout  a  god 
that  you  know  not,  and  that  never  has  smiled  upon  you." 

The  speaker  stood  outside  the  crowd  with  a  dead  sea- 
bird  in  his  hand  ;  he  was  in  his  early  boyhood,  he  had 
long  locks  of  bright  hair  that  curled  loosely  on  his  shoul- 
ders, and  eyes  of  northern  blue,  that  flashed  like  steel  in 
their  scorn.. 

The  people,  indignant  and  terrified  at  the  cold  rough 
words  which  blasphemed  their  prophet,  turned  with  one 
accord  to  draw  off  the  rash  doubter  from  that  sacred 
audience-place,  but  the  Preacher  stayed  their  hands  with 
a  gesture,  and  looked  sadly  at  the  boy. 

"  Is  it  thee,  Arslan?  Dost  thou  praise  gold? — I 
thought  thou  hadst  greater  gods." 

The  boy  hung  his  head  and  his  face  flushed. 

"  Gold  must  be  power  always,"  he  muttered.  "  And 
without  power  what  is  life  ?" 

And  he  went  on  his  way  out  from  the  people,  with  the 
dead  bird,  which  he  had  slain  with  a  stone  that  he  might 
study  the  exquisite  mysteries  of  its  silvery  hues. 

The  Preacher  followed  him  dreamily  with  his  glance. 

"  Yet  he  will  not  give  his  life  for  gold,"  he  murmured. 
"  For  there  is  that  In  him  greater  than  gold,  which  will 
not  let  him  sell  it,  if  he  would," 


18* 


210  FOLLE-FARINE. 


CHAPTER   Y. 

And  the  words  of  the  Preacher  had  come  true ;  so  true 
that  the  boy  Arslan  grown  to  manhood,  had  dreamed  of 
fame,  and  following  the  genius  in  him,  and  having  failed 
to  force  the  world  to  faith  in  him,  had  dropped  down 
dying  on  a  cold  hearth,  for  sheer  lack  of  bread,  under  the 
eyes  of  the  gods. 

It  had  long  been  day  when  he  awoke. 

The  wood  smouldered,  still  warming  the  stone  cham- 
ber. The  owls  that  nested  in  the  ceiling  of  the  hall  were 
beating  their  wings  impatiently  against  the  closed  case- 
ments, blind  with  the  light  and  unable  to  return  to  their 
haunts  and  homes.  The  food  and  the  wine  stood  beside 
him  on  ihe  floor  ;  the  fire  had  scared  the  rats  from  theft. 

He  raised  himself  slowly,  and  by  sheer  instinct  ate 
and  drank  with  the  avidity  of  long  fast.  Then  he  stared 
around  him  blankly,  blinded  like  the  owls. 

It  seemed  to  him  that  he  had  been  dead  ;  and  had  risen 
from  the  grave. 

"  It  will  be  to  suffer  it  all  over  again  in  a  little  space," 
he  muttered  dully. 

His  first  sensation  was  disappointment,  anger,  weari- 
ness.    He  did  not  reason.     He  only  felt. 

His  mind  was  a  blank. 

Little  by  little  a  disjointed  remembrance  came  to  him. 
He  remembered  that  he  had  been  famished  in  the  cold- 
ness of  the  night,  endured  much  torment  of  the  body, 
had  fallen  headlong  and  lost  his  consciousness.  This 
was  all  he  could  recall. 

He  looked  stupidly  for  awhile  at  the  burning  logs; 
at  the  pile  of  brambles;  at  the  flask  of  wine,  and  the 
simple  stores  of  food.  He  looked  at  the  gray  closed 
window,  through  which  a  silvery  daylight  came.  There 
was  not  a  sound  in  the  house  ;  there  was  only  the  crack- 
ing  of   the  wood  and  the  sharp  sealike  smell  of  the 


FOLLE-FARINE.  211 

smoking  pine  boughs  to  render  the  place  different  from 
what  it  had  been  when  he  last  had  seen  it. 

He  could  recall  nothing,  except  that  he  had  starved  for 
many  days ;  had  suffered,  and  must  have  slept. 

Suddenly  his  face  burned  with  a  flush  of  shame.  As 
sense  returned  to  him,  he  knew  that  he  must  have 
swooned  from  weakness  produced  by  cold  and  hunger ; 
that  some  one  must  have  seen  and  succored  his  neces- 
sity ;  and  that  the  food  which  he  had  half  unconsciously 
devoured  must  have  been  the  food  of  alms. 

His  limbs  writhed  and  his  teeth  clinched  as  the  thought 
stole  on  him. 

To  have  gone  through  all  the  aching  pangs  of  winter 
in  silence,  asking  aid  of  none,  only  to  come  to  this  at 
last !  To  have  been  ready  to  die  in  all  the  vigor  of  virility, 
in  all  the  strength  of  genius,  only  to  be  saved  by  charity 
at  the  end  !  To  have  endured,  mute  and  patient,  the 
travail  of  all  the  barren  years,  only  at  their  close  to  be 
called  back  to  life  by  aid  that  was  degradation  ! 

He  bit  his  lips  till  the  blood  started,  as  he  thought  of 
it.  Some  eyes  must  have  looked  on  him,  in  his  wretched- 
ness. Some  face  must  have  bent  over  him  in  his  misery. 
Some  other  human  form  must  have  been  near  his  in  this 
hour  of  his  feebleness  and  need,  or  this  thing  could  never 
have  been  ;  he  would  have  died  alone  and  unremembered 
of  man,  like  a  snake  in  its  swamp  or  a  fox  in  its  earth. 
And  such  a  death  would  have  been  to  him  tenfold  prefer- 
able to  a  life  restored  to  him  by  such  a  means  as  this. 

Death  before  accomplishment  is  a  failure,  yet  withal 
may  be  great ;  but  life  paved  by  alms  is  a  failure,  and  a 
failure  forever  inglorious. 

So  the  shame  of  this  ransom  from  death  far  outweighed 
with  him  the  benefit. 

"  Why  could  they  not  let  me  be  ?"  he  cried  in  his  soul 
against  those  unknown  lives  which  had  weighed  his  own 
with  the  fetters  of  obligation.  "  Rather  death  than  a 
debt  I  I  was  content  to  die ;  the  bitterness  was  passed. 
I  should  have  known  no  more.  Why  could  they  not  let 
me  be  !" 

And  his  heart  was  hard  against  them  They  had 
stolen  his  only  birthright — freedom. 


212  FOLLE-FARWE. 

Had  he  craved  life  so  much  as  to  desire  to  live  by- 
shame  he  would  soon  have  gone  out  into  the  dusky  night 
and  have  snatched  food  enough  for  his  wants  from  some 
rich  husbandman's  granaries,  or  have  stabbed  some  miser 
at  prayers,  for  a  bag  of  gold— rather  crime  than  the  debt 
of  a  beggar. 

So  he  reasoned  ;  stung  and  made  savage  by  the  scourge 
of  enforced  humiliation.  Hating  himself  because,  in 
obedience  to  mere  animal  craving,  he  had  taken  and 
eaten,  not  asking  whether  what  he  took  was  his  own. 

He  had  closed  his  mouth,  living,  and  had  been  ready 
to  die  mute,  glad  only  that  none  had  pitied  him ;  his 
heart  hardened  itself  utterly  against  this  unknown  hand 
which  had  snatched  him  from  death's  dreamless  ease  and 
ungrudged  rest,  to  awaken  him  to  a  humiliation  that 
would  be  as  ashes  in  his  teeth  so  long  as  his  life  should 
last. 

He  arose  slowly  and  staggered  to  the  casement. 

He  fancied  he  was  delirious,  and  had  distempered 
visions  of  the  food  so  long  desired.  He  knew  that  he 
had  been  starving  long — how  long  ?  Long  enough  for 
his  brain  to  be  weak  and  visited  with  phantoms.  In- 
stinctively he  touched  the  long  round  rolls  of  bread,  the 
shape  of  the  wine  cask,  the  wicker  of  the  basket :  they 
were  the  palpable  things  of  common  life ;  they  seemed  to 
tell  him  that  he  had  not  dreamed. 

Then  it  was  charity  ?     His  lips  moved  with  a  curse. 

That  was  his  only  thanksgiving. 

The  windows  were  unshuttered  ;  through  them  he 
looked  straight  out  upon  the  rising  day — a  day  rainless 
and  pale,  and  full  of  cool  softness,  after  the  deluge  of  the 
rains. 

The  faint  sunlight  of  a  spring  that  was  still  chilled  by 
winter  was  shed  over  the  flooded  fields  and  swollen 
streams ;  snow-white  mists  floated  before  the  languid 
passage  of  the  wind ;  and  the  moist  land  gave  back,  as 
in  a  mirror,  the  leafless  trees,  the  wooden  bridges,  the 
belfries,  and  the  steeples,  and  the  strange  sad  bleeding 
Christs. 

On  all  sides  near,  the  meadows  were  sheets  of  water, 
the  woods  seemed  to  drift  upon  a  lake ;  a  swan's  nest 


FOLLE-FARINE.  213 

was  washed  past  on  broken  rushes,  the  great  silvery 
birds  beating  their  heavy  wings  upon  the  air,  and  pur- 
suing their  ruined  home  with  cries.  Beyond,  everything 
was  veiled  in  the  twilight  of  the  damp  gray  vapor ;  a 
world  half  seen,  half  shrouded,  lovely  exceedingly,  filled 
with  all  divine  possibilities  and  all  hidden  powers:  a 
world  such  as  Youth  beholds  with  longing  eyes  in  its 
visions  of  the  future. 

"A  beautiful  world!"  he  said  to  himself;  and  he 
smiled  wearily  as  ho  said  it. 

Beautiful,  certainly  ;  in  that  delicious  shadow  ;  in  that 
vague  light ;  in  that  cloudlike  mist,  wherein  the  earth  met 
heaven. 

Beautiful,  certainly ;  all  those  mystical  shapes  rising 
from  the  sea  of  moisture  which  hid  the  earth  and  all 
the  things  that  toiled  on  it.  It  was  beautiful,  this  calm, 
dim,  morning  world,  in  which  there  was  no  sound  except 
the  distant  ringing  of  unseen  bells ;  this  veil  of  vapor, 
whence  sprang  these  fairy  and  fantastic  shapes  that  cleft 
the  watery  air;  this  colorless  transparent  exhalation, 
breathing  up  from  the  land  to  the  sky,  in  which  all 
homely  things  took  grace  and  mystery,  and  every  com- 
mon and  familiar  form  became  transfigured. 

It  was  beautiful ;  but  this  landscape  had  been  seen  too 
long  and  closely  by  him  for  it  to  have  power  left  to  cheat 
his  senses. 

Under  that  pure  and  mystical  veil  of  the  refracted  rain 
things  vile,  and  things  full  of  anguish,  had  their  being: 
— the  cattle  in  the  slaughter-houses  ;  the  drunkard  in  the 
hovels ;  disease  and  debauch  and  famine ;  the  ditch,  that 
was  the  common  grave  of  all  the  poor ;  the  hospital,  where 
pincers  and  knives  tore  the  living  nerves  in  the  inquisi- 
tion of  science ;  the  fields,  where  the  women  toiled  bent, 
cramped,  and  hideous ;  the  dumb  driven  beasts,  patient 
and  tortured,  forever  blameless,  yet  forever  accursed ; — 
all  these  were  there  beneath  that  lovely  veil,  through  which 
there  came  so  dreamily  the  slender  shafts  of  spires  and 
the  chimes  of  half-heard  bells. 

He  stood  and  watched  it  long,  so  long  that  the  clouds 
descended  and  the  vapors  shifted  away,  and  the  pale  sun- 
rays  shone  clearly  over  a  disenchanted  world,  where  roof 


214  FOLLE-FARINE. 

joined  roof  and  casement  answered  casement,  and  the 
figures  on  the  crosses  became  but  rude  and  ill-carved 
daubs ;  and  the  cocks  crew  to  one  another,  and  the  herds- 
men swore  at  their  flocks,  and  the  oxen  flinched  at  the 
goad,  and  the  women  went  forth  to  their  field-work;  and 
all  the  charm  was  gone. 

Then  he  turned  away. 

The  cold  fresh  breath  of  the  morning  had  breathed 
upon  him,  and  driven  out  the  dull  delicious  fancies  that 
had  possessed  his  brain.  The  simple  truth  was  plain 
before  him  :  that  he  had  been  seen  by  some  stranger  in 
his  necessity  and  succored. 

He  was  thankless ;  like  the  suicide,  to  whom  unwel- 
come aid  denies  the  refuge  of  the  grave,  calling  him  back 
to  suffer,  and  binding  on  his  shoulders  the  discarded  bur- 
den of  life's  infinite  weariness  and  woes. 

He  was  thankless  ;  for  he  had  grown  tired  of  this 
fruitless  labor,  this  abortive  combat;  he  had  grown  tired 
of  seeking  credence  and  being  derided  for  his  pains, 
while  other  men  prostituted  their  powers  to  base  use 
and  public  gain,  receiving  as  their  wages  honor  and 
applause;  he  had  grown  tired  of  toiling  to  give  beauty 
and  divinity  to  a  world  which  knew  them  not  when  it 
beheld  them. 

He  had  grown  tired,  though  he  was  yet  young,  and 
had  strength,  and  had  passion,  and  had  manhood.  Tired 
—utterly,  because  he  was  destitute  of  all  things  save  his 
genius,  and  in  that  none  were  found  to  believe. 

"  I  have  tried  all  things,  and  there  is  nothing  of  any 
worth."  It  does  not  need  to  have  worn  the  imperial 
purples  and  to  be  lying  dying  in  old  age  to  know  thus 
much  in  all  truth  and  all  bitterness. 

"  Why  did  they  give  me  back  my  life  ?»  he  said  in  his 
heart,  as  he  turned  aside  from  the  risen  sun. 

He  had  striven  to  do  justly  with  this  strange,  fleeting, 
unasked  gift  of  existence,  which  comes,  already  warped' 
into  our  hands,  and  is  broken  by  death  ere  we  can  set  it 
straight. 

He  had  not  spent  it  in  riot  or  madness,  in  lewd  love 
or  in  gambling  greed  ;  he  had  been  governed  by  great 
desires,  though  these  had  been  fruitless,  and  had  spent 


FOLLE-FARINE.  215 

his  strength  to  a  great  end,  though  this  had  been  never 
reached. 

As  he  turned  from  looking  out  upon  the  swollen  stream 
that  rushed  beneath  his  windows,  his  eyes  fell  upon  the 
opposite  wall,  where  the  white  shapes  of  his  cartoons 
were  caught  by  the  awakening  sun. 

The  spider  had  drawn  his  dusty  trail  across  them ;  the 
rat  had  squatted  at  their  feet;  the  darkness  of  night  had 
enshrouded  and  defaced  them  ;  yet  with  the  morning 
they  arose,  stainless,  noble,  undefiled. 

Among  them  there  was  one  colossal  form,  on  which 
the  sun  poured  with  its  full  radiance. 

This  was  the  form  of  a  captive  grinding  at  a  mill- 
stone ;  the  majestic  symmetrical  supple  form  of  a  man 
who  was  also  a  god. 

In  his  naked  limbs  there  was  a  supreme  power ;  in 
his  glance  there  was  a  divine  command ;  his  head  was 
lifted  as  though  no  yoke  could  ever  lie  on  that  proud 
neck ;  his  foot  seemed  to  spurn  the  earth  as  though  no 
mortal  tie  had  ever  bound  him  to  the  sod  that  human 
steps  bestrode  :  yet  at  the  corn-mill  he  labored,  grind- 
ing wheat  like  the  patient  blinded  oxen  that  toiled  beside 
him. 

For  it  was  the  great  Apollo  in  Pheras. 

The  hand  which  awoke  the  music  of  the  spheres  had 
been  blood-stained  with  murder  ;  the  beauty  which  had 
the  light  and  luster  of  the  sun  had  been  darkened  with 
passion  and  with  crime  ;  the  will  which  no  other  on  earth 
or  in  heaven  could  withstand  had  been  bent  under  the 
chastisement  of  Zeus. 

He  whose  glance  had  made  the  black  and  barren  slopes 
of  Delos  to  laugh  with  fruitfulness  and  gladness, — he 
whose  prophetic  sight  beheld  all  things  past,  present,  and 
to  come,  the  fate  of  all  unborn  races,  the  doom  of  all  un- 
spent ages, — he,  the  Far-Striking  King,  labored  here 
beneath  the  curse  of  crime,  greatest  of  all  the  gods,  and 
yet  a  slave. 

In  all  the  hills  and  vales  of  Greece  his  Io  paean  sounded 
still. 

Upon  his  holy  mountains  there  still  arose  the  smoke 
of  fires  of  sacrifice. 


216  FOLLE-FARINE. 

With  dance  and  song  the  Delian  maidens  still  hailed 
the  divinity  of  Leto's  son. 

The  waves  of  the  pure  Ionian  air  still  rang  forever 
with  the  name  of  Delphinios. 

At  Pytho  and  at  Clarus,  in  Lycia  and  in  Phokis,  his 
oracles  still  breathed  forth  upon  their  fiat  terror  or  hope 
into  the  lives  of  men  ;  and  still  in  all  the  virgin  forests 
of  the  world  the  wild  beasts  honored  him  wheresoever 
they  wandered,  and  the  lion  and  the  boar  came  at  his 
bidding  from  the  deserts  to  bend  their  free  necks  and 
their  wills  of  fire  meekly  to  bear  his  yoke  in  Thessaly. 

Yet  he  labored  here  at  the  corn-mill  of  Admetus  ;  and 
watching  him  at  his  bondage  there  stood  the  slender, 
slight,  wing-footed  Hermes,  with  a  slow  mocking  smile 
upon  his  knavish  lips,  and  a  jeering  scorn  in  his  keen 
eyes,  even  as  though  ho  cried : 

"O  brother,  who  would  be  greater  than  I!  For  what 
hast  thou  bartered  to  me  the  golden  rod  of  thy  wealth, 
and  thy  dominion  over  the  flocks  and  the  herds  ?  For 
seven  chords  strung  on  a  shell — for  a  melody  not  even 
thine  own  1  For  a  lyre  outshone  by  my  syrinx  hast  thou 
sold  all  thine  empire  to  me  !  Will  human  ears  give  heed 
to  thy  song,  now  thy  scepter  has  passed  to  my  hands  ? 
Immortal  music  only  is  left  thee,  and  the  vision  foresee- 
ing the  future.  O  god  !  0  hero !  0  fool !  what  shall 
these  profit  thee  now  ?" 

Thus  to  the  artist  by  whom  they  bad  been  begotten 
the  dim  white  shapes  of  the  deities  spoke.  Thus  he  saw 
them,  thus  he  heard,  whilst  the  pale  and  watery  sunlight 
lit  up  the  form  of  the  toiler  in  Pherae. 

For  even  as  it  was  with  the  divinity  of  Delos,  so  is  it 
likewise  with  the  genius  of  a  man,  which,  being  born  of 
a  god,  yet  is  bound  as  a  slave  to  the  grindstone.  Since, 
even  as  Hermes  mocked  the  Lord  of  the  Unerring  Bow, 
so  is  genius  mocked  of  the  world  when  it  has  bar- 
tered the  herds,  and  the  grain,  and  the  rod  that  metes 
wealth,  for  the  seven  chords  that  no  ear,  dully  mortal, 
can  hear. 

And  as  he  looked  upon  this  symbol  of  his  life,  the 
captivity  and  the  calamity,  the  strength  and  the  slavery 
of  his  existence  overcame  him ;  and  for  the  first  hour 


,      FOLLE-FARINE.  217 

since  he  had  been  born  of  a  woman  Arslan  buried  his 
face  in  his  hands  and  wept. 

He  could  bend  great  thoughts  to  take  the  shapes  that 
he  chose,  as  the  chained  god  in  PheraB  bound  the  strong 
kings  of  the  desert  and  forest  to  cany  his  yoke;  yet,  like 
the  god,  he  likewise  stood  fettered  to  the  mill  to  grind 
for  bread. 


19 


BOOK  IV. 


CHAPTER  I. 


A  valley  long  and  narrow,  shut  out  from  the  rest  of 
the  living  world  by  the  ramparts  of  stone  that  rose  on 
either  side  to  touch  the  clouds ;  dense  forests  of  pines, 
purple  as  night,  where  the  erl-king  rode  and  the  bear- 
king  reigned  ;  at  one  end  mountains,  mist,  and  gloom,  at 
the  other  end  the  ocean ;  brief  days  with  the  sun  shed  on 
a  world  of  snow,  in  which  the  sounds  of  the  winds  and 
the  moans  of  the  wolves  alone  were  heard  in  the  soli- 
tude ;  long  nights  of  marvelous  magnificence  with  the 
stars  of  the  arctic  zone  glowing  with  an  unbearable  luster 
above  a  sea  of  phosphorescent  fire ;  those  were  Arslan's 
earliest  memories — those  had  made  him  what  he  was. 

In  that  pine-clothed  Norwegian  valley,  opening  to  the 
sea,  there  were  a  few  homesteads  gathered  together 
round  a,  little  wooden  church,  with  torrents  falling  above 
them,  and  a  profound  loneliness  around  ;  severed  by  more 
than  a  day's  journey  from  any  other  of  the  habitations 
of  men. 

There  a  simple  idyllic  life  rolled  slowly  on  through  the 
late  and  lovely  springtimes,  when  the  waters  loosened 
and  the  seed  sprouted,  and  the  white  blossoms  broke 
above  the  black  ground:  through  the  short  and  glorious 
summers,  when  the  children's  eyes  saw  the  elves  kiss 
the  roses,  and  the  fairies  float  on  the  sunbeam,  and  the 
maidens  braided  their  fair  hair  with  blue  cornflowers  to 
dance  on  the  eve  of  St.  John :  through  the  long  and 
silent  winters,  when  an  almost  continual  night  brooded 
over  all  things,  and  the  thunder  of  the  ocean  alone 
answered  the  war  of  the  wind-torn  forests,  and  the  blood- 
red  blaze  of  the  northern  light  gleamed  over  a  white  still 
(218) 


FOLLE-FARINE.  219 

mountain  world,  and,  within  doors,  by  the  warm  wood 
fire  the  youths  sang  Scandinavian  ballads,  and  the  old 
people  told  strange  sagas,  and  the  mothers,  rocking  their 
new-born  sons  to  sleep,  prayed  God  to  have  mercy  on  all 
human  lives  drowning  at  sea  and  frozen  in. the  snow. 

In  this  alpine  valley,  a  green  nest,  hidden  amidst  stu- 
pendous walls  of  stone,  bottomless  precipices,  and  sum- 
mits that  touched  the  clouds,  there  was  a  cottage  even 
smaller  and  humbler  than  most,  and  closest  of  all  to  the 
church.     It  was  the  house  of  the  pastor. 

The  old  man  had  been  born  there,  and  had  lived  there 
all  the  years  of  his  life, — save  a  few  that  he  had  passed  in 
a  town  as  a  student, — and  he  had  wedded  a  neighbor  who, 
like  himself,  had  known  no  other  home  than  this  one 
village.  He  was  gentle,  patient,  simple,  and  full  of  ten- 
derness ;  he  worked,  like  his  people,  all  the  week  through 
in  the  open  weather  among  his  fruit-trees,  his  little 
breadth  of  pasturage,  his  herb-garden,  and  his  few  sheep. 

On  the  Sabbath-day  he  preached  to  the  people  the  creed 
that  he  himself  believed  in  with  all  the  fond,  unquestion- 
ing, implicit  faith  of  the  young  children  who  lifted  to  him 
their  wondering  eyes. 

He  was  good;  he  was  old:  in  his  simple  needs  and 
his  undoubting  hopes  he  was  happy  ;  all  the  living  things 
of  his  little  world  loved  him,  and  he  loved  them.  So  fate 
lit  on  him  to  torture  him,  as  it  is  its  pleasure  to  torture 
the  innocent. 

It  sent  him  a  daughter  who  was  fair  to  sight,  and  had 
a  voice  like  music ;  a  form  lithe  and  white,  hair  of  gold, 
and  with  eyes  like  her  own  blue  skies  on  a  summer  night. 

She  had  never  seen  any  other  spot  save  her  own 
valley  ;  but  she  had  the  old  Norse  blood  in  her  veins,  and 
she  was  restless ;  the  sea  tempted  her  with  an  intense 
power ;  she  desired  passionately  without  kuowing  what 
she  desired. 

The  simple  pastoral  work,  the  peaceful  household  labors, 
the  girls'  garland  of  alpine  flowers,  the  youths'  singing 
in  the  brief  rose  twilight,  the  saga  told  the  thousandth 
time  around  the  lamp  in  the  deep  midwinter  silence; 
these  things  would  not  suffice  for  her.  The  old  Scandi- 
navian Bersaeck  madness  was  in  her  veins.    The  mount- 


220  FOLLE-FARINE. 

ains  were  to  her  as  the  walls  of  a  tomb.  And  one  day 
the  sea  tempted  her  too  utterly  ;  beyond  her  strength  ; 
as  a  lover,  after  a  thousand  vain  entreaties,  one  day 
tempts  a  woman,  and  one  day  finds  her  weak.  The  sea 
vanquished  her,  and  she  went — whither  ? 

They  hardly  knew :  to  these  old  people  the  world  that 
lay  behind  their  mountain  fortress  was  a  blank  It  might 
be  a  paradise  ;  it  might  be  a  prison.    They  could  not  tell. 

They  suffered  their  great  agony  meekly  ;  they  never 
cursed  her ;  they  did  not  even  curse  their  God  because 
they  had  given  life  to  a  woman-child. 

After  awhile  they  heard  of  her. 

She  wrote  them  tender  and  glowing  words ;  she  was 
well,  she  was  proud,  she  was  glad,  she  had  found  those 
who  told  her  that  she  had  a  voice  which  was  a  gift  of 
gold,  and  that  she  might  sing  in  triumph  to  the  nations. 
Such  tidings  came  to  her  parents  from  time  to  time ;  brief 
words,  first  teeming  with  hope,  then  delirious  with 
triumph,  yet  ever  ending  with  a  short,  sad  sigh  of  con- 
science, a  prayer  for  pardon — pardon  for  what  ?  The 
letters  never  said:  perhaps  onl}r  for  the  sin  of  desertion. 

The  slow  salt  tears  of  age  fell  on  these  glowing  pages 
in  which  the  heart  of  a  young,  vainglorious,  mad,  tender 
creature  had  stamped  itself;  but  the  old  people  never 
spoke  of  them  to  others.  "■  She  is  happy,  it  does  not 
matter -^br  us."  This  was  all  they  said,  yet  this  gentle 
patience  was  a  martyrdom  too  sharp  to  last;  within  that 
year  the  mother  died,  and  the  old  man  was  left  alone. 

The  long  winter  came,  locking  the  valley  within  its 
fortress  of  ice,  severing  it  from  all  the  rest  of  the  breath- 
ing human  world  ;  and  the  letters  ceased  He  would  not 
let  them  say  that  she  had  forgotten;  he  chose  to  think 
that  it  was  the  wall  of  snow  which  was  built  up  between 
them  rather  than  any  division  raised  by  her  ingratitude 
and  oblivion. 

The  sweet,  sudden  spring  came,  all  the  white  and 
golden  flowers  breaking  up  from  the  hard  crust  of  the 
soil,  and  all  the  loosened  waters  rushing  with  a  shout  of 
liberty  to  join  the  sea.  The  summer  followed,  with  the 
red  mountain  roses  blossoming  by  the  brooks,  and  the 
green  mountain  grasses  blowing  in  the  wind,  with  the 


FOL  LE-FARINE.  22 1 

music  of  the  herd-bells  ringing  down  the  passes,  and  the 
sound  of  the  fife  and  of  the  reed-pipe  calling  the  maidens 
to  the  dance. 

In  the  midst  of  the  summer,  one  night,  when  all  the 
stars  were  shining  above  the  quiet  valley,  and  all  the 
children  slept  under  the  roofs  with  the  swallows,  and  not 
a  soul  was  stirring,  save  where  here  and  there  a  lover 
watched  a  light  glare  in  some  lattice  underneath  the 
eaves,  a  half-dead  woman  dragged  herself  feebly  under 
the  lime-tree  shadows  of  the  pastor's  house,  and  struck 
with  a  faint  cry  upon  the  door  and  fell  at  her  father's 
feet,  broken  and  senseless.  Before  the  full  day  dawned 
she  had  given  birth  to  a  male  child  and  was  dead. 

Forgiveness  had  killed  her;  she  might  have  borne 
reproach,  injury,  malediction,  but  against  that  infinite 
love  which  would  bear  with  her  even  in  her  wretched- 
ness, and  would  receive  her  even  in  her  abasement,  she 
had  no  strength. 

She  died  as  her  son's  eyes  opened  to  the  morning  light. 
He  inherited  no  name,  and  they  called  him  after  his  grand- 
sire,  Arslan. 

When  his  dead  daughter  lay  stretched  before  him  in 
the  sunlight,  with  her  white  large  limbs  folded  to  rest, 
and  her  noble  fair  face  calm  as  a  mask  of  marble,  the  old 
pastor  knew  little — nothing — of  what  her  life  through 
these  two  brief  years  had  been.  Her  lips  had  scarcely 
breathed  a  word  before  she  had  fallen  senseless  on  his 
threshold.  That  she  had  had  triumph  he  knew;  that  she 
had  fallen  into  dire  necessities  he  saw.  Whether  she  had 
surrendered  art  for  the  sake  of  love,  or  whether  she  had 
lost  the  public  favor  by  some  public  caprice,  whether  she 
had  been  eminent  or  obscure  in  her  career,  whether  it 
had  abandoned  her,  or  she  had  abandoned  it,  he  could 
not  tell,  and  he  knew  too  little  of  the  world  to  be  able  to 
learn. 

That  she  had  traveled  back  on  her  weary  way  home- 
ward to  her  native  mountains  that  her  son  might  not 
perish  amidst  strangers;  thus  much  he  knew,  but  no 
more.     Nor  was  more  ever  known  by  any  living  soul. 

In  life  there  are  so  many  histories  which  are  like 
broken  boughs  that  strew  the  ground,  snapped  short  at 

19* 


222  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

either  end,  so  that  Done  know  the  crown  of  them  nor  the 
root. 

The  child,  whom  she  had  left,  grew  in  goodliness,  and 
strength,  and  stature,  until  the  people  said  that  he  was 
like  the  child-king,  whom  their  hero  Frithiof  raised  up 
.upon  his  buckler  above  the  multitude:  and  who  was  not 
afraid,  but  boldly  gripped  the  brazen  shield,  and  smiled 
fearlessly  at  the  noonday  sun. 

The  child  had  his  mother's  Scandinavian  beauty ;  the 
beauty  of  a  marble  statue,  white  as  the  snow,  of  great 
height  and  largely  moulded ;  and  his  free  life  amidst  the  ice- 
fields and  the  pine-woods,  and  on  the  wide,  wild  northern 
seas  developed  these  bodily  to  their  uttermost  perfection. 
The  people  admired  and  wondered  at  him ;  love  him  they 
did  not.  The  lad  was  cold,  dauntless,  silent ;  he  repelled 
their  sympathies  and  disdained  their  pastimes.  He  chose 
rather  to  be  by  himself,  than  with  them.  He  was  never 
cruel ;  but  be  was  never  tender ;  and  when  he  did  speak 
he  spoke  with  a  sort  of  eloquent  scorn  and  caustic  imag- 
ery that  seemed  to  them  extraordinary  in  one  so  young. 

But  his  grandfather  loved  him  with  a  sincere  love, 
though  it  was  tinged  with  so  sharp  a  bitterness ;  and 
reared  him  tenderly  and  wisely  ;  and  braced  him  with  a 
scholar's  lore  and  by  a  mountaineer's  exposure  ;  so  that 
both  brain  and  body  had  their  due.  He  was  a  simple 
childlike  broken  old  man;  but  in  this  youth  of  promise 
that  unfolded  itself  beside  his  age  seemed  to  strike  fresh 
root,  and  he  had  wisdom  and  skill  enough  to  guide  it  justly. 

The  desire  of  his  soul  was  that  his  grandson  should 
succeed  him  in  the  spiritual  charge  of  that  tranquil  and 
beloved  valley,  and  thus  escape  the  dire  perils  of  that 
world  in  which  his  mother's  life  had  been  caught  and 
consumed  like- a  moth's  in  flame.  But  Arslan's  eyes 
looked  ever  across  the  ocean  with  that  look  in  them 
which  had  been  in  his  mother's;  and  when  the  old 
Norseman  spoke  of  this  holy  and  peaceful  future,  he  was 
silent. 

Moreover,  he — who  had  never  beheld  but  the  rude 
paintings  on  panels  of  pine  that  decorated  the  little  red 
church  under  the  firs  and  lindens, — he  had  the  gift  of  art 
in  him. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  223 

He  had  few  and  rough  means  only  with  which  to  make 
his  crude  and  unguided  essays ;  but  the  delirium  of  it 
was  on  him,  and  the  peasants  of  his  village  gazed  awe- 
stricken  and  adoring  before  the  things  which  he  drew  on 
every  piece  of  pine-wood,  on  every  smooth  breadth  of 
sea-worn  granite,  on  every  bare  surface  of  lime-washed 
wall  that  he  could  find  at  liberty  for  his  usage. 

When  they  asked  him  what,  in  his  manhood,  he  would 
do,  he  said  little.  "I  will  never  leave  the  old  man,"  he 
made  answer;  and  he  kept  his  word.  Up  to  his  twen- 
tieth year  he  never  quitted  the  valley.  He  studied 
deeply,  after  his  own  manner;  but  nearly  all  his  hours 
were  passed  in  the  open  air  alone,  in  the  pure  cold  air  of 
the  highest  mountain  summits,  amidst  the  thunder  of  the 
furious  torrents,  in  the  black  recesses  of  lonely  forests, 
where  none,  save  the  wolf  and  the  bear,  wandered  with 
him;  or  away  on  the  vast  expanse  of  the  sea,  where  the 
storm  drove  the  great  arctic  waves  life  scourged  sheep, 
and  the  huge  breakers  seized  the  shore  as  a  panther  its 
prey. 

On  such  a  world  as  this,  and  on  the  marvelous  nights 
of  the  north,  his  mind  fed  itself  and  his  youth  gained  its 
powers.  The  faint,  feeble  life  of  the  old  man  held  him 
to  this  lonely  valley  that  seemed  filled  with  the  coldness, 
the  mystery,  the  unutterable  terrov  and  the  majesty  of 
the  arctic  pole,  to  which  it  looked ;  but  unknown  to 
him,  circumstance  thus  held  him  likewise  where  alone 
the  genius  in  him  could  take  its  full  shape  and  full 
stature. 

Unknown  to  him,  in  these  years  it  took  the  depth,  the 
strength,  the  patience,  the  melancholy,  the  virility  of  the 
North  ;  took  these  never  to  be  lost  again. 

In  the  twentieth  winter  of  his  life  an  avalanche  en- 
gulfed the  pastor's  house,  and  the  little  church  by  which 
it  stood,  covering  both  beneath  a  mountain  of  earth  and 
snow  and  rock  and  riven  trees.  Some  of  the  timbers 
withstood  the  shock,  and  the  roof  remained  standing, 
uncrushed,  above  their  heads.  The  avalanche  fell  some 
little  time  after  midnight:  there  were  only  present  in  the 
dwelling  himself,  the  old  mau,  and  a  serving  woman. 

The  woman  was  killed  on  her  bed  by  the  fall  of  a  beam 


224  FOLLE-FARINE. 

upon  her;  he  and  the  pastor  still  lived :  lived  in  perpetual 
darkness  without  food  or  fuel,  or  any  ray  of  light. 

The  wooden  clock  stood  erect,  uninjured;  they  could 
hear  the  hours  go  by  in  slow  succession.  The  old  man 
was  peaceful  and  even  cheerful ;  praising  God  often  and 
praying  that  help  might  come  to  his  beloved  one.  But 
his  strength  could  not  hold  out  against  the  icy  cold,  the 
long  hunger,  the  dreadful  blank  around  as  of  perpetual 
night.  He  died  ere  the  first  day  had  wholly  gone  by, 
at  even-song;  saying  still  that  he  was  content,  and  still 
praising  God  who  had  rewarded  his  innocence  with  shame 
and  recompensed  his  service  with  agony. 

For  two  more  days  and  nights  Arslan  remained  in  his 
living  tomb,  enshrouded  in  eternal  gloom,  alone  with^the 
dead,  stretching  out  his  hands  ever  and  again  to  meet 
that  icy  touch  rather  than  be  without  companionship. 

On  the  morning  of  the  third  day  the  people  of  the  vil- 
lage, who  had  labored  ceaselessly,  reached  him,  and  he 
was  saved. 

As  soon  as  the  spring  broke  he  left  the  valley  and 
passed  over  the  mountains,  seeking  a  new  world. 

His  old  familiar  home  had  become  hateful  to  him;  he 
had  no  tie  to  it  save  two  low  graves,  still  snow-covered 
underneath  a  knot  of  tall  stone-pines;  the  old  Norse  pas- 
sion of  wandering  was  in  his  veins  as  it  had  been  in  his 
mother's  before  him ;  he  fiercely  and  mutely  descried  free- 
dom, passion,  knowledge,  art,  fame,  as  she  had  desired 
them,  and  he  went:  turning  his  face  from  that  lowly 
green  nest  lying  like  a  lark's  between  the  hills. 

He  did  not  go  as  youth  mostly  goes,  blind  with  a  divine 
dream  of  triumph:  he  went,  consciously,  to  a  bitter 
combat  as  the  sea-kings  of  old,  whose  blood  ran  in  his 
veins,  and  whose  strength  was  in  his  limbs,  had  gone  to 
war,  setting  their  prow  hard  against  the  sharp  salt  waves 
and  in  the  teeth  of  an  adverse  wind. 

He  was  not  without  money.  The  pastor,  indeed,  had 
died  almost  penniless  ;  he  had  been  always  poor,  and  had 
given  the  little  he  possessed  to  those  still  poorer.  But 
the  richest  landowner  in  the  village,  the  largest  possessor 
of  flocks  and  herds,  dying  childless,  had  bequeathed  his 
farm  and  cattle  to  Arslan;  having  loved  the  lad's  dead 


FOLLE-FARINE.  225 

mother  silently  and  vainly.  The  value  of  these  realized 
by  sale  gave  to  Arslan,  when  he  became  his  own  master, 
what,  in  that  valley  at  least,  was  wealth ;  and  he  went 
without  care  for  the  future  on  this  score  into  the  world 
of  men  ;  his  mind  full  of  dreams  and  the  beautiful  myths 
of  dead  ages ;  his  temper  compounded  of  poetry  and  of 
coldness,  of  enthusiasm  and  of  skepticism  ;  his  one  passion 
a  supreme  ambition,  pure  as  snow  in  its  instinct,  but  half 
savage  in  its  intensity. 

From  that  spring,  when  he  had  passed  away  from  his 
birthplace  as  the  winter  snows  were  melting  on  the 
mountain-sides,  and  the  mountain  flowers  were  putting 
forth  their  earliest  buds  under  the  pine-boughs,  until  the 
time  that  he  now  stood  solitary,  starving,  and  hopeless 
before  the  mocking  eyes  of  his  Hermes,  twelve  years  had 
run  their  course,  and  all  through  them  he  had  never  once 
again  beheld  his  native  land. 

Like  the  Scandinavian  Regner,  he  chose  rather  to 
perish  in  the  folds,  and  by  the  fangs,  of  the  snakes  that 
devoured  him  than  return  to  his  country  with  the  con- 
fession of  defeat.  And  despite  the  powers  that  were  in 
him,  his  life  had  been  a  failure,  an  utter  failure — as  yet. 

In  his  early  youth  he  had  voyaged  often  with  men  who 
went  to  the  extreme  north  in  search  of  skins  and  such 
poor  trade  as  they  could  drive  with  Esquimaux  or  Koraks ; 
he  had  borne  their  dangers  and  their  poverty,  their 
miseries  and  their  famine,  for  sake  of  seeing  what  they 
saw; — the  pathless  oceans  of  the  ice  realm,  the  trailing 
pines  alone  in  a  white,  snow-world,  the  red  moon  fantastic 
and  horrible  in  a  sky  of  steel,  the  horned  clouds  of  rein- 
deer rushing  through  the  endless  night,  the  arch  of  the 
aurora  spanning  the  heavens  with  their  fire.  He  had 
passed  many  seasons  of  his  boyhood  in  the  silence,  the 
solitude,  the  eternal  desolation  of  the  mute  mystery  of 
^he  arctic  world,  which  for  no  man  has  either  sympathy 
or  story ;  and  in  a  way  he  had  loved  it,  and  was  often 
weary  for  it;  in  a  way  its  spirit  remained  with  him 
always  ;  and  its  inexorable  coldness,  its  pitiless  indiffer- 
ence to  men's  wants  and  weakness,  its  loneliness  and  its 
purity,  and  its  scorn,  were  in  all  the  works  of  his  hand  ; 
blended  in   a  strange   union   with   the  cruelty  and  the 


226  FOLLE-FARINE. 

voluptuousness,  and  the  gorgeousness  of  color,  that  gave  to 
everything  he  touched  thegleed  and  the  temper  of  the  case. 

Thus,  what  he  did  pleased  none  ;  being  for  one  half  the 
world  too  chill,  and  being  for  the  other  half  too  sensual. 

The  world  had  never  believed  in  him  ;  and  he  found 
himself  in  the  height  and  the  maturity  of  his  powers  con- 
demned to  an  absolute  obscurity.  Not  one  man  in  a 
million  knew  his  name. 

During  these  years  he  had  devoted  himself  to  the  study 
of  art  with  an  undeviating  subservience  to  all  its  tyran- 
nies. He  had  studied  humanity  in  all  its  phases;  he  had 
studied  form  with  all  the  rigid  care  that  it  requires;  he 
had  studied  color  in  almost  every  land  that  lies  beneath 
the  sun  ;  he  had  studied  the  passions  in  all  their  defor- 
mities, as  well  as  in  all  their  beauties ;  he  had  spared 
neither  himself  nor  others  in  pursuit  of  knowledge.  He 
had  tried  most  vices,  he  had  seen  all  miseries,  he  bad 
spared  himself  no  spectacle,  however  loathsome ;  he  had 
turned  back  from  no  license,  however  undesired,  that 
could  give  him  insight  into  or  empire  over  human  raptures 
and  affliction.  Neither  did  he  spare  himself  any  labor 
however  costly,  however  exhausting,  to  enrich  his  brain 
with  that  varied  learning,  that  multifarious  scene  which 
he  held  needful  to  every  artist  who  dared  to  desire  great- 
ness. The  hireling  beauty  of  the  wanton,  the  splendor 
of  the  sun  and  sea,  the  charnel  lore  of  anatomy,  the 
secrets  of  dead  tongues  and  buried  nations,  the  horrors 
of  the  lazar  wards  and  pest-houses,  the  glories  of  golden 
deserts  and  purple  vineyards,  the  flush  of  love  on  a  young 
girl's  cheek,  the  rottenness  of  corruption  on  a  dead  man's 
limbs,  the  hellish  tint  of  a  brothel,  the  divine  calm  of  an 
Eastern  night;  all  things  alike  he  studied,  without  abhor- 
rence as  without  delight,  indifferent  to  all  save  for  one 
end, — knowledge  and  art. 

So  entirely  and  undividedly  did  this  possess  him  thai 
it  seemed  to  have  left  him  without  other  passions;  even 
as  the  surgeon  dissects  the  fair  lifeless  body  of  some 
woman's  corpse,  regardless  of  loveliness  or  sex,  only  in- 
tent on  the  secret  of  disease,  the  mystery  of  formation, 
which  he  seeks  therein,  so  did  he  study  the  physical 
beauty  of  women  and  their  mortal  corruption,  without 


FOLLE-FARINE.  227 

other  memories  than  those  of  art.  He  would  see  the 
veil  fail  from  off  the  limbs  of  a  creature  lovely  as  a  god- 
dess, and  would  think  only  to  himself, — "  How  shall  I 
render  this  so  that  on  n^r  canvas  it  shall  live  once 
more  ?" 

One  night,  in  the  hot,  close  streets  of  Damascus,  a  man 
was  stabbed, — a'young  Maronite, — who  lay  dying  in  the 
roadway,  without  sign  or  sound,  whilst  his  assassins  fled ; 
the  silver  Syrian  moon  shining  full  on  his  white  and 
scarlet  robe,  his  calm,  upturned  face,  his  lean  hand  knotted 
on  the  dagger  he  had  been  spared  no  time  to  use ;  a 
famished  street  dog  smelling  at  his  blood.  Arslan,  pass- 
ing through  the  city,  saw  and  paused  beside  him  ;  stood 
still  and  motionless,  looking  down  on  the  outstretched 
figure  ;  then  drew  his  tablets  out  and  sketched  the  serene, 
rigid  face,  the  flowing,  blood-soaked  robes,  the  hungry 
animal  mouthing  at  the  wound.  Another  painter,  his 
familiar  friend,  following  on  his  steps,  joined  him  a  little 
later,  and  started  from  his  side  in  horror. 

"  My  God !  what  do  you  do  there  ?"  he  cried.  "  Do 
you  not  see  ? — the  man  is  dying." 

Arslan  looked  up — "I  had  not  thought  of  that,"  be 
answered. 

It  was  thus  always  with  him. 

He  was  not  cruel  for  the  sake  of  cruelty.  To  animals 
he  was  humane,  to  women  gentle,  to  men  serene  ;  but 
his  art  was  before  all  things  with  him,  and  with  humanity 
he  had  little  sympathy:  and  if  he  had  passions,  they  had 
wakened  no  more  than  as  the  drowsy  tiger  wakes  in  the 
hot  hush  of  noon,  half  indifferent,  half  lustful,  to  strike 
fiercely  what  comes  before  her,  and  then,  having  slain, 
couches  herself  and  sleeps  again. 

But  for  this  absolute  surrender  of  his  life,  his  art  had 
as  yet  recompensed  him  nothing. 

Men  did  not  believe  in  him;  what  he  wrought  sad- 
dened and  terrified  them  ;  they  turned  aside  to  those  who 
fed  them  on  simpler  and  on  sweeter  food. 

His  works  were  great,  but  they  were  such  as  the  pub- 
lic mind  deems  impious.  They  unveiled  human  corrup- 
tion too  nakedly,  and  they  shadowed  forth  visions  too 
exalted,  and  satires  too  unsparing,  for  them  to  be  accept- 


226  FOLLE-FARINE. 

voluptuousness,  and  the  gorgeousness  of  color,  that  gave  to 
everything  he  touched  the  gleed  and  the  temper  of  the  case. 

Thus,  what  he  did  pleased  none  ;  being  for  one  half  the 
world  too  chill,  and  being  for  the  other  half  too  sensual. 

The  world  had  never  believed  in  him  ;  and  he  found 
himself  in  the  height  and  the  maturity  of  his  powers  con- 
demned to  an  absolute  obscurity.  Not  one  man  in  a 
million  knew  his  name. 

During  these  years  he  had  devoted  himself  to  the  study 
of  art  with  an  undeviating  subservience  to  all  its  tyran- 
nies. He  had  studied  humanity  in  all  its  phases  ;  he  had 
studied  form  with  all  the  rigid  care  that  it  requires;  he 
had  studied  color  in  almost  every  land  that  lies  beneath 
the  sun  ;  he  had  studied  the  passions  in  all  their  defor- 
mities, as  well  as  in  all  their  beauties ;  he  had  spared 
neither  himself  nor  others  in  pursuit  of  knowledge.  He 
had  tried  most  vices,  he  had  seen  all  miseries,  he  had 
spared  himself  no  spectacle,  however  loathsome;  he  had 
turned  back  from  no  license,  however  undesired,  that 
could  give  him  insight  into  or  empire  over  human  raptures 
and  affliction.  Neither  did  he  spare  himself  any  labor 
however  costly,  however  exhausting,  to  enrich  his  brain 
with  that  varied  learning,  that  multifarious  scene  which 
he  held  needful  to  every  artist  who  dared  to  desire  great- 
ness. The  hireling  beauty  of  the  wanton,  the  splendor 
of  the  sun  and  sea,  the  enamel  lore  of  anatomy,  the 
secrets  of  dead  tongues  and  buried  nations,  the  horrors 
of  the  lazar  wards  and  pest-houses,  the  glories  of  golden 
deserts  and  purple  vineyards,  the  flush  of  love  on  a  young 
girl's  cheek,  the  rottenness  of  corruption  on  a  dead  man's 
limbs,  the  hellish  tint  of  a  brothel,  the  divine  calm  of  an 
Eastern  night;  all  things  alike  he  studied,  without  abhor- 
rence as  without  delight,  indifferent  to  all  save  for  one 
end, — knowledge  and  art. 

So  entirely  and  undividedly  did  this  possess  him  thai 
it  seemed  to  have  left  him  without  other  passions;  even 
as  the  surgeon  dissects  the  fair  lifeless  body  of  some 
woman's  corpse,  regardless  of  loveliness  or  sex,  only  in- 
tent on  the  secret  of  disease,  the  mystery  of  formation, 
which  he  seeks  therein,  so  did  he  study  the  physical 
beauty  of  women  and  their  mortal  corruption,  without 


FOLLE-FARINK  227 

other  memories  than  those  of  art.  He  would  see  the 
veil  fall  from  off  the  limbs  of  a  creature  lovely  as  a  god- 
dess, and  would  think  only  to  himself, — "  How  shall  I 
render  this  so  that  on   n^   canvas  it   shall   live    once 


more 


fn 


One  night,  in  the  hot,  close  streets  of  Damascus,  a  man 
was  stabbed, — a'young  Maronite, — who  lay  dying  in  the 
roadway,  without  sign  or  sound,  whilst  his  assassins  fled; 
the  silver  Syrian  moon  shining  full  on  his  white  and 
scarlet  robe,  his  calm,  upturned  face,  his  lean  hand  knotted 
on  the  dagger  he  had  been  spared  no  time  to  use;  a 
famished  street  dog  smelling  at  his  blood.  Arslan,  pass- 
ing through  the  city,  saw  and  paused  beside  him  ;  stood 
still  and  motionless,  looking  down  on  the  outstretched 
figure  ;  then  drew  his  tablets  out  and  sketched  the  serene, 
rigid  face,  the  flowing,  blood-soaked  robes,  the  hungry 
animal  mouthing  at  the  wound.  Another  painter,  his 
familiar  friend,  following  on  his  steps,  joined  him  a  little 
later,  and  started  from  his  side  in  horror. 

"  My  God  I  what  do  you  do  there  ?"  he  cried.  "  Do 
you  not  see  ? — the  man  is  dying." 

Arslan  looked  up — "  I  had  not  thought  of  that,"  he 
answered. 

It  was  thus  always  with  him. 

He  was  not  cruel  for  the  sake  of  cruelty.  To  animals 
he  was  humane,  to  women  gentle,  to  men  serene  ;  but 
his  art  was  before  all  things  with  him,  and  with  humanity 
he  had  little  sympathy:  and  if  he  had  passions,  they  had 
wakened  no  more  than  as  the  drowsy  tiger  wakes  in  the 
hot  hush  of  noon,  half  indifferent,  half  lustful,  to  strike 
fiercely  what  comes  before  her,  and  then,  having  slain, 
couches  herself  and  sleeps  again. 

But  for  this  absolute  surrender  of  his  life,  his  art  had 
as  yet  recompensed  him  nothing. 

Men  did  not  believe  in  him ;  what  he  wrought  sad- 
dened and  terrified  them  ;  they  turned  aside  to  those  who 
fed  them  on  simpler  and  on  sweeter  food. 

His  works  were  great,  but  they  were  such  as  the  pub- 
lic mind  deems  impious.  They  unveiled  human  corrup- 
tion too  nakedly,  and  they  shadowed  forth  visions  too 
exalted,  and  satires  too  unsparing,  for  them  to  be  accept- 


228  FOLLE-FARINE. 

able  to  the  multitude.  They  were  compounded  of  an 
idealism  clear  and  cold  as  crystal,  and  of  a  reality  cruel 
and  voluptuous  as  love.  They  were  penetrated  with  an 
acrid  satire  and  an  intense  despair :  the  world,  which 
only  cares  for  a  honeyed  falsehood  and  a  gilded  gloss  in 
every  art,  would  have  none  of  them. 

So  for  these  twelve  long  years  his' labor  had  been 
waste,  his  efforts  been  fruitless.  Those  years  had  been 
costly  to  him  in  purse ; — travel,  study,  gold  flung  to  fallen 
women,  sums  spent  on  faithless  friends,  utter  indifference 
to  whosoever  robbed  him  so  long  as  he  was  left  in  peace 
to  pursue  lofty  aims  and  high  endeavors ;  all  these  did 
their  common'work  on  wealth  which  was  scanty  in  the 
press  of  the  world,  though  it  had  appeared  inexhaustible 
on  the  shores  of  the  north  sea.  His  labors  also  were 
costly,  and  they  brought  him  no  return. 

The  indifference  to  fortune  of  a  man  of  genius  is,  to  a 
man  of  the  world,  the  stupor  of  idiocy:  from  such  a 
stupor  he  was  shaken  one  day  to  find  himself  face  to  face 
with  beggary. 

His  works  were  seen  by  few,  and  these  few  were  an- 
tagonistic to  them. 

All  ways  to  fame  were  closed  to  him,  either  by  the  envy 
of  other  painters,  or  by  the  apathies  and  the  antipathies 
of  the  nations  themselves.  In  all  lands  he  was  repulsed  ; 
he  roused  the  jealousy  of  his  compeers  and  the  terror  of 
the  multitudes.  They  hurled  against  him  the  old  worn- 
out  cry  that  the  office  of  art  was  to  give  pleasure,  not  pain  ; 
and  when  his  money  was  gone,  so  that  he  could  no  longer, 
at  his  own  cost  expose  his  works  to  the  public  gaze,  they 
and  he  were  alike  obliterated  from  the  public  marts  ;  they 
had  always  denied  him  fame,  and  they  now  thrust  him 
quickly  into  oblivion,  and  abandoned  him  to  it  without 
remorse,  and  even  with  contentment. 

He  could,  indeed,  with  the  facile  power  of  eye  and  touch 
that  he  possessed,  have  easily  purchased  a  temporary 
ease,  an  evanescent  repute,  if  he  had  given  the  world  from 
his  pencil  those  themes  for  which  it  cared,  and  descended 
to  the  common  spheres  of  common  art.  But  he  refused 
utterly  to  do  this.  The  best  and  greatest  thing  in  him 
was  his  honesty  to  the  genius  wherewith  he  was  gifted; 


FOLLE-FARINE.  229 

he  refused  to  prostitute  it;  he  refused  to  do  other  than  to 
tell  the  truth  as  he  saw  it. 

''This  man  blasphemes;  this  man  is  immoral,"  his 
enemies  had  always  hooted  against  him. 

It  is  what  the  world  always  says  of  those  who  utter 
unwelcome  truths  in  its  unwilling  ears. 

So  the  words  of  the  old  Scald  by  his  own  northern  sea- 
shores came  to  pass;  and  at  length,  for  the  sake  of  art,  it 
came  to  this,  that  he  perished  for  want  of  bread. 

For  seven  days  he  had  been  without  food,  except  the 
winter  berries  which  he  broke  off  the  trees  without,  and 
such  handfuls  of  wheat  as  fell  through  the  disjointed  tim- 
bers of  the  ceiling,  for  whose  possession  he  disputed  with 
the  rats. 

The  sheer,  absolute  poverty  which  leaves  the  man 
whom  it  has  seized  without  so  much  as  even  a  crust 
wherewith  to  break  his  fast,  is  commoner  than  the  world 
in  general  ever  dreams.  For  he  was  now  so  poor  that 
for  many  months  he  had  been  unable  to  buy  fresh  canvas 
on  which  to  work,  and  had  been  driven  to  chalk  the  out- 
lines of  the  innumerable  fancies  that  pursued  him  upon 
the  bare  smooth  gray  stone  walls  of  the  old  granary  in 
which  he  dwelt. 

He  let  his  life  go  silently  away  without  complaint,  and 
without  effort,  because  effort  had  been  so  long  unavailing, 
that  he  had  discarded  it  in  a  contemptuous  despair. 

He  accepted  his  fate,  seeing  nothing  strange  in  it,  and 
nothing  pitiable;  since  many  men  better  than  lie  had  borne 
the  like.  He  could  not  have  altered  it  without  beggary 
or  theft,  and  he  thought  either  of  these  worse  than  itself. 

There  were  hecatombs  of  grain,  bursting  their  sacks,  in 
the  lofts  above  ;  but  when,  once  on  each  eighth  day,  the 
maltster  owning  them  sent  his  men  to  fetch  some  from  the 
store,  Arslan  let  the  boat  be  moored  against  the  wall,  be 
filled  with  barley,  and  be  pushed  away  again  down  the  cur- 
rent, without  saying  once  to  the  rowers,  "  Wait ;  I  starve  !" 

And  yet,  though  like  a  miser  amidst  his  gold,  his  body 
starved  amidst  the  noble  shapes  and  the  great  thoughts 
that  his  brain  conceived  and  his  hand  called  into  sub- 
stance, he  never  once  dreamed  of  abandoning  for  any 
other  the  career  to  which  he  had  dedicated  himself  from 

20 


230  FOLLE-FARINE. 

the  earliest  days  that  his  boyish  eyes  had  watched  the 
vast  are  of  the  arctic  lights  glow  above  the  winter  seas. 

Art  was  to  him  as  mother,  brethren,  mistress,  offspring, 
religion — all  that  other  men  hold  dear.  He  had  none  of 
these,  he  desired  none  of  them  ;  and  his  genius  sufficed  to 
him  in  their  stead. 

It  was  an  intense  and  reckless  egotism,  made  alike  cruel 
and  sublime  by  its  intensity  and  purity,  like  the  egotism 
of  a  mother  in  her  child.  To  it,  as  the  mother  to  her  child, 
he  would  have  sacrificed  every  living  creature;  but  to  it 
also,  like  her,  he  would  have  sacrificed  his  very  existence 
as  unhesitatingly.  But  it  was  an  egotism  which,  though 
merciless  in  its  tyranny,  was  as  pure  as  snow  in  its  im- 
personality ;  it  was  untainted  by  any  grain  of  avarice,  of 
vanity,  of  selfish  desire;  it  was  independent  of  all  sympa- 
thy; it  was  simply  and  intensely  the  passion  for  immor- 
tality : — that  sublime  selfishness,  that  superb  madness,  of 
all  great  minds. 

Art  had  taken  him  for  its  own,  as  Demeter,  in  the  days 
of  her  desolation,  took  the  child  Demophoon,  to  nurture 
him  as  her  own  on  the  food  of  gods,  and  to  plunge  him 
through  the  flames  of  a  fire  that  would  give  him  immor- 
tal life.  As  the  pusillanimous  and  sordid  fears  of  the 
mortal  mother  lost  to  the  child  for  evermore  the  posses- 
sion of  Olympian  joys  and  of  perpetual  youth,  so  did  the 
craven  and  earthly  cares  of  bodily  needs  hold  the  artist 
back  from  the  radiance  of  the  life  of  the  soul,  and  drag 
him  from  the  purifying  fires.  Yet  he  had  not  been 
utterly  discouraged  ;  he  strove  against  the  Metaniera  of 
circumstance ;  he  did  his  best  to  struggle  free  from  the 
mortal  bonds  that  bound  him;  and  as  the  child  Demo- 
phoon mourned  for  the  great  goddess  that  had  nurtured 
him,  refusing  to  be  comforted,  so  did  he  turn  from  the 
base  consolations  of  the  senses  and  the  appetites,  and  be- 
held ever  before  his  sight  the  ineffable  majesty  of  that 
Mater  Dolorosa  who  once  had  anointed  him  as  her  own. 

Even  now,  as  the  strength  returned  to  his  limbs  and 
the  warmth  to  his  veins,  the  old  passion,  the  old  worship, 
returned  to  him. 

The  momentary  weakness  which  had  assailed  him 
passed  away.     He  shook  himself  with  a  bitter  impatient 


FOLLE-FARINE.  231 

scorn  for  the  feebleness  into  which  he  had  been  be- 
trayed ;  and  glanced  around  him  still  with  a  dull  wonder 
as  to  the  strange  chances  which  the  night  past  had 
brought.  He  was  incredulous  still ;  he  thought  that  his 
fancy,  heated  by  long  fasting,  might  have  cheated  him ; 
that  he  must  have  dreamed  ;  and  that  the  food  and  fuel 
which  he  saw  must  surely  have  been  his  own. 

m  reflection  told  him  that  this  could  not  be  ;  he  re- 
membered that  for  several  weeks  his  last  coin  had  been 
spent;  that  he  had  been  glad  to  gather  the  birds'  winter 
berries  to  crush  beneath  his  teeth,  and  gather  the  dropped 
corn  from  the  floor  to  quiet  the  calm  of  hunger ;  that  for 
many  a  day  there  had  been  no  fire  on  the  hearth,  and  that 
only  a  frame  which  the  long  sunless  northern  winters  had 
braced  in  early  youth,  had  enabled  him  to  resist  and  en- 
dure the  cold.     Therefore,  it  must  be  charity ! 

Charity  1  as  the  hateful  truth  came  home  to  him,  he 
met  the  eyes  of  the  white,  slender,  winged  Hermes  ;  eyes 
that  from  out  that  colorless  and  smiling  face  seemed  to 
mock  him  with  a  cruel  contempt. 

His  was  the  old  old  story; — the  rod  of  wealth  bar- 
tered for  the  empty  shell  that  gave  forth  music. 

Hermes  seemed  to  know  it  and  to  jeer  him. 

Hermes,  the  mischief-monger,  and  the  trickster  of  men, 
the  inventive  god  who  spent  his  days  in  chicanery  of  his 
brethren,  and  his  nights  in  the  mockery  of  mortals ;  the 
messenger  of  heaven  who  gave  Pandora  to  mankind  ; 
Hermes,  the  eternal  type  of  unscrupulous  Success,  seemed 
to  have  voice  and  cry  to  him : — "  Oh,  fool,  fool,  fool !  who 
listens  for  the  music  of  the  spheres  and  disdains  the 
only  melody  that  men  have  ears  to  hear — the  melody  of 
gold!" 

Arslan  turned  from  the  great  cartoon  of  the  gods  in 
Pherae,  and  went  out  into  the  day  fight,  and  stripped  and 
plunged  into  the  cold  and  turbulent  stream.  Its  chillness 
and  the  combat  of  its  current  braced  his  nerves  and  cleared 
his  brain. 

When  he  was  clad,  he  left  the  grain-tower  with  the 
white  forms  of  its  gods  upon  its  walls,  and  walked  slowly 
down  the  bank  of  the  river.  Since  life  had  been  forced 
back  upon  him  he  knew  that  it  was  incumbent  upon  his 


232  FOLLE-FARINE. 

manhood  to  support  it  by  the  toil  of  bis  bands   if  men 
would  not  accept  the  labor  of  bis  brain. 

Before,  be  had  been  too  absorbed  in  his  pursuit,  too 
devoted  to  it  body  and  soul,  to  seek  to  sustain  existence 
by  the  sheer  manual  exertion  which  was  the  only  thing 
that  he  had  left  untried  for  self-maintenance.  In  a  man- 
ner too  he  was  too  proud  ;  not  too  proud  to  labor  but 
too  proud  to  easily  endure  to  lay  bare  his  needs  tvthe 
knowledge  of  others.  But  now,  human  charity  must 
have  saved  him;  a  charity  which  he  hated  as  the  foulest 
insult  of  his  life  ;  and  he  had  no  chance  save  to  accept  it 
like  a  beggar  bereft  of  all  shame,  or  to  seek  such  work  as 
would  give  him  his  daily  bread. 

So  he  went ;  feebly,  for  he  was  still  weak  from  the 
length  of  his  famine. 

The  country  was  well  known  to  him,  but  the  people 
not  at  all.  He" had  come  by  hazard  on  the  old  ruin  where 
he  dwelt,  and  had  stayed  there  full  a  year.  These  serene 
blue  skies,  these  pale  mists,  these  corn-clad  slopes,  these 
fields  of  plenteous  abundance,  these  quiet  homesteads, 
these  fruit-harvests  of  this  Norman  plain  were  in  sooth- 
ing contrast  to  all  that  his  life  had  known. 

These  old  quaint  cities,  these'little  villages  that  seemed 
always  hushed  with  the  sound  of  bells,  these  quiet  streams 
on  which  the  calm  sunlight  slept  so  peacefully,  these 
green  and  golden  lands  of  plenty  that  stretched  away  to 
the  dim  gray  distant  sea,— all  these  had  had  a  certain 
charm  for  him. 

He  had  abided  with  them,  partly  because  amidst  them 
it  seemed  possible  to  live  on  a  handful  of  wheat  and  a 
draught  of  water,  unnoticed  and  unpitied;  partly  because 
having  come  hither  on  foot  through  many  lands  and  by 
long  hardship,  he  had  paused  here  weary  and  incapable 
of  further  effort. 

Whilst  the  little  gold  he  had  bad  on  him  had  lasted  he 
had  painted  innumerable  transcripts  of  its  ancient  build- 
ings, and  of  its  summer  and  autumnal  landscapes.  And 
of  late— through  the  bitter  winter — of  late  it  had  seemed 
to  him  that  it  was  as  well  to  die  here  as  elsewhere. 

When  a  man  knows  that  his  dead  limbs  will  be  hud- 
dled into  the  common  ditch  of  the  poor,  the  nameless, 


FOLLE-FARINE.  233 

and  the  unclaimed,  and  that  his  dead  brain  will  only- 
serve  for  soil  to  feed  some  little  rank  wayside  poisonous 
weed,  it  will  seldom  seem  of  much  moment  in  what  earth 
the  ditch  be  dug,  by  what  feet  the  sward  be  trod. 

He  went  now  on  his  way  seeking  work;  he  did  not 
care  what,  he  asked  for  any  that  might  serve  to  use  such 
strength  as  hunger  had  left  in  him,  and  to  give  him  his 
daily  bread.  But  this  is  a  great  thing  to  demand  in  this 
world,  and  so  he  found  it. 

They  repulsed  him  everywhere. 

They  had  their  own  people  in  plenty,  they  had  their 
sturdy,  tough,  weather-beaten  women,  who  labored  all 
day  in  rain,  or  snow,  or  storm,  for  a  pittance,  and  they 
had  these  in  larger  numbers  than  their  field-work  needed. 
They  looked  at  him  askance ;  this  man  with  the  eyes  of 
arctic  blue  and  the  grave  gestures  of  a  king,  who  only 
asked  to  labor  as  the  lowest  among  them.  He  was  a 
stranger  to  them ;  he  did  not  speak  their  tongue  with 
their  accent;  he  looked,  with  that  white  beauty  and  that 
lofty  stature,  as  though  he  could  crush  them  in  the  hol- 
low of  his  hand. 

They  would  have  none  of  him. 

"  He  brings  misfortune !"  they  said  among  themselves ; 
and  they  would  have  none  of  him. 

He  had  an  evil  name  with  them. 

They  said  at  eventide  by  their  wood-fires  that  strange 
things  had  been  seen  since  he  had  come  to  the  granary 
by  the  river. 

Once  he  had  painted  a  study  of  the  wondrous  child 
Zagreus  gazing  in  the  fatal  mirror,  from  the  pretty  face 
of  a  stonecutter's  little  fair  son ;  the  child  was  laughing, 
happy,  healthful  at  noon,  crowned  with  carnations  and 
river-lilies,  and  by  sunset  he  was  dead — dead  like  the 
flowers  that  were  still  among  his  curls. 

Once  a  girl  had  hired  herself  as  model  to  him  for  an 
Egyptian  wanton,  half  a  singer  and  half  a  gypsy — hand- 
some, lithe,  fantastic,  voluptuous:  the  very  night  she  left 
the  granary  she  was  drowned  in  crossing  a  wooden  bridge 
of  the  river,  which  gave  way  under  the  heavy  tramp  of  a 
fantoccini  player  who  accompanied  her. 

Once  he  had  sketched,  for  the  corner  of  an  Oriental 
20* 


234  POLLS  FARINE. 

study,  a  rare-plumaged  bird  of  the  south,  which  was  the 
idol  of  a  water-carrier  of  the  district,  and  the  wonder  of 
all  the  children  round :  and  from  that  date  the  bird  had 
sickened,  and  drooped,  and  lost  its  colors,  and  pined  until 
it  died. 

The  boy's  death  had  been  from  a  sudden  seizure  of  one 
of  the  many  ills  of  infancy  ;  the  dancing-girl's  had  come 
from  a  common  accident  due  to  the  rottenness  of  old  worn 
water-soaked  timber  ;  the  mocking-bird's  had  arisen  from 
the  cruelty  of  captivity  and  the  chills  of  northern  winds  ; 
all  had  been  the  result  of  simple  accident  and  of  natural 
circumstance.  But  they  had  sufficed  to  fill  with  horror 
the  minds  of  a  peasantry  always  bigoted  and  strongly 
prejudiced  against  every  stranger ;  and  it  became  to  them 
a  matter  of  implicit  credence  that  whatsoever  living  thing 
should  be  painted  by  the  artist  Arslan  would  assuredly 
never  survive  to  see  the  rising  of  the  morrow's  sun. 

In  consequence,  for  leagues  around  they  shunned  him  ; 
not  man,  nor  woman,  nor  child  would  sit  to  him  as  models  ; 
and  now,  when  he  sought  the  wage  of  a  daily  labor  among 
them,  he  was  everywhere  repulsed.  He  had  long  repulsed 
human  sympathy,  and  in  its  turn  it  repulsed  him. 

At  last  he  turned  and  retraced  his  steps,  baffled  and 
wearied ;  his  early  habits  had  made  him  familiar  with  all 
manner  of  agricultural  toil ;  he  would  have  done  the  task 
of  the  sower,  the  herdsman,  the  hewer  of  wood,  or  the 
charcoal-burner ;  but  they  would  none  of  them  believe 
this  of  one  with  his  glance  and  his  aspect;  and  solicita- 
tion was  new  to  his  lips  and  bitter  there  as  gall, 

He  took  his  way  back  along  the  line  of  the  river;  the 
beauty  of  the  dawn  had  gone,  the  day  was  only  now 
chilly,  heavy  with  a  rank  moisture  from  the  steaming 
soil.  Broken  boughs  and  uprooted  bushes  were  floating 
on  the  turgid  water,  and  over  all  the  land  there  hung  a 
sullen  fog. 

The  pressure  of  the  air,  the  humidity,  the  colorless 
stillness  that  reigned  throughout,  weighed  on  lungs  which 
for  a  score  of  years  had  only  breathed  the  pure,  strong, 
rarefied  air  of  the  north  ;  he  longed  with  a  sudden 
passion  to  be  once  more  amidst  his  native  mountains 
under  the  clear  steel-like  skies,  and  beside  the  rush  of  the 


FOLLE-FARTNE.  235 

vast  wild  seas.  Were  it  only  to  die  as  he  looked  on  them, 
it  were  better  to  die  there  than  here. 

He  longed,  as  men  in  deserts  thirst  for  drink,  for  one 
breath  of  the  strong  salt  air  of  the  north,  one  sight  of  the 
bright  keen  sea-born  sun  as  it  leapt  at  dawn  from  the 
waters. 

The  crisp  cold  nights,  the  heavens  which  shone  as  steel, 
the  forests  filled  with  the  cry  of^he  wolves,  the  mountains 
which  the  ocean  ceaselessly  assailed,  the  mighty  waves 
which  marched  erect  like  armies,  the  bitter  arctic  wind 
which  like  a  saber  cleft  the  darkuess  ;  all  these  came  back 
to  him  beloved  and  beautiful  in  all  their  cruelty ;  desired 
by  him,  with  a  sick  longing  for  their  freshness,  for  their 
fierceness,  for  their  freedom. 

As  he  dragged  his  tired  limbs  through  the  grasses  and 
looked  out  upon  the  sullen  stream  that  flowed  beside  him, 
an  oar  struck  the  water,  a  flat  black  boat  drifted  beneath 
the  bank,  a  wild  swan  disturbed  rose  with  a  hiss  from  the 
sedges. 

The  boat  was  laden  with  grain ;  there  was  only  one 
rower  in  it,  who  steered  by  a  string  wound  round  her  foot. 

She  did  not  lift  her  face  as  she  went  by  him ;  but  her 
bent  brow  and  her  bosom  grew  red,  and  she  cut  the  water 
with  a  swifter,  sharper  stroke ;  her  features  were  turned 
from  him  by  that  movement  of  her  head,  but  he  saw  the 
Eastern  outline  of  the  cheek  and  chin,  the  embrowned 
velvet  of  the  skin,  the  half-bare  beauty  of  the  heaving 
chest  and  supple  spine  bent  back  in  the  action  of  the  oars, 
the  long,  slender,  arched  shape  of  the  naked  foot,  round 
which  the  cord  was  twined:  their  contour  and  their 
color  struck  him  with  a  sudden  surprise. 

He  had  seen  such  oftentimes,  eastwards,  on  the  banks 
of  golden  rivers,  treading,  with  such  feet  as  these,  the 
sands  that  were  the  dust  of  countless  nations ;  bearing, 
on  such  shoulders  as  these,  earthen  water-vases  that 
might  have  served  the  feasts  of  Pharaohs ;  showing  such 
limbs  as  these  against  the  curled  palm  branches,  and  the 
deep  blue  sky,  upon  the  desert's  edge.  But  here  ! — a  face 
of  Asia  among  the  cornlands  of  Northern  France  ?  It 
seemed  to  him  strange ;  he  looked  after  her  with  wonder. 

The  boat  went  on  down  the  stream  without  any  pause; 


236  FOLLE  FARINE. 

the  sculls  cleaving  the  heavy  tide  with  regular  and  reso- 
lute monotony;  the  amber  piles  of  the  grain  and  the 
brown  form  of  the  bending  figure  soon  hidden  in  the 
clouds  of  river-mist. 

He  watched  her,  only  seeing  a  beggar-girl  rowing  a 
skiff  full  of  corn  down  "a  sluggish  stream.  There  was 
nothing  to  tell  him  that  he  was  looking  upon  the  savior 
of  his  body  from  the  thralls  of  death;  if  there  had  been, 
in  his  mood  then, — he  would  have  cursed  her. 

The  boat  glided  into  the  fog  which  closed  behind  it:  a 
flock  of  water-birds  swam  out  from  the  rushes  and  darted 
at  some  floating  kernels  of  wheat  that  had  fallen  over 
the  vessel's  side;  they  fought  and  hissed,  and  flapped 
and  pecked  among  themselves  over  the  chance  plunder  ; 
a  large  rat  stole  amidst  them  unnoticed  by  them  in  their 
exultation,  and  seized  their  leader  and  bore  him  struggling 
and  beating  the  air  with  blood-stained  wings  away  to  a 
hole  in  the  bank ;  a  mongrel  dog,  prowling  on  the  shore, 
hearing  the  wild  duck's  cries,  splashed  into  the  sedges, 
and  swam  out  and  gripped  the  rat  by  the  neck  in  bold 
sharp  fangs,  and  bore  both  rat  and  bird,  bleeding  and 
dving,  to  the  land;  the  owner  of  the  mongrel,  a  peasant, 
making  ready  the  soil  for  colza  in  the  low-lying  fields, 
snatched  the'duck  from  the  dog  to  bear  it  home  for  his 
own  eating,  and  kicked  his  poor  beast  in  the  ribs  for  hav- 
ing ventured  to  stray  without  leave  and  to  do  him  service 
without  permission.  "  The  dulcet  harmony  of  the  world's 
benignant  law,"  thought  Arslan,  as  he  turned  aside  to 
enter  the  stone  archway  of  his  own  desolate  dwelling. 
"To  live  one  must  slaughter — what  life  can  I  take?" 

At  that  moment  the  setting  sun  pierced  the  heavy  veil 
of  the  vapor,  and  glowed  through  the  fog. 

The  boat,  now  distant,  glided  for  a  moment  into  the 
ruddy  haze,  and  was  visible;  the  water  around  it,  like  a 
lake  of  flame,  the  white  steam  above  it  like  the  smoke  of 
a  sacrifice  fire. 

Then  the  sun  sank,  the  mists  gathered  closely  once 
more,  all  light  faded,  and  the  day  was  dead. 

He  felt  stifled  and  sick  at  heart  as  he  returned  along 
the  reedy  shore  towards  his  dreary  home.  He  wondered 
dully  why  his  life  would  not  end  :  since  the  world  would 


FOLLE-FARINE.  237 

have  none  of  him,  neither  the  work  of  his  brain  nor  the 
work  of  his  hands,  it  seemed  that  he  had  no  place  in  it. 

He  was  half  resolved  to  lie  down  in  the  water  there, 
among  the  reeds,  and  let  it  flow  over  his  face  and  breast, 
and  kiss  him  softly  and  coldly  into  the  sleep  of  death. 
lie  had  desired  this  many  times ;  what  held  him  back 
from  its  indulgence  was  not  "the  child  within  us  that 
fears  death,"  of  which  Plato  speaks ;  he  had  no  such  mis- 
giving in  him,  and  he  believed  death  to  be  a  simple 
rupture  and  end  of  all  things,  such  as  any  man  had  right 
to  seek  and  summon  for  himself;  it  was  rather  that  the 
passion  of  his  art  was  too  strong  in  him,  that  the  power 
to  create  was  too  intense  in  him,  so  that  he  could  not 
willingly  consign  the  forces  and  the  fantasies  of  his  brain 
to  that  assimilation  to  which  he  would,  without  thought 
or  pause,  have  flung  his  body. 

As  he  entered  the  haunted  hall  which  served  him  as 
his  painting-room,  be  saw  a  fresh  fire  of  logs  upon  the 
hearth,  whose  leaping  flames  lighted  the  place  with 
cheerful  color,  and  he  saw  on  the  stone  bench  fresh  food, 
sufficient  to  last  several  days,  and  a  brass  flagon  filled 
with  wine. 

A  curious  emotion  took  possession  of  him  as  he  looked. 
It  was  less  surprise  at  the  fact,  for  his  senses  told  him 
that  it  was  the  work  of  some  charity  which  chose  to 
hide  itself,  than  it  was  wonder  as  to  who,  in  this  strange 
land,  where  none  would  even  let  him  earn  his  daily 
bread,  knew  enough  or  cared  enough  to  supply  his 
necessities  thus.  And  with  this  there  arose  the  same 
intolerant  bitterness  of  the  degradation  of  alms,  the  same 
ungrateful  hatred  of  the  succor  that  seemed  to  class  him 
among  beggars,  which  had  moved  him  when  he  had 
awakened  with  the  dawn. 

He  felt  neither  tenderness  nor  gratitude,  he  was  only 
conscious  of  humiliation. 

There  were  in  him  a  certain  coldness,  strength,  and 
indifference  to  sympathy,  which,  whilst  they  made  his 
greatness  as  an  artist,  made  his  callousness  as  a  man. 
It  might  have  been  sweet  to  others  to  find  themselves 
thus  remembered  and  pitied  by  another  at  an  hour  when 
their  forces  were  spent,  their  fate  friendless,  and  their 


238  FOLLE-FARINE. 

hopes  all  dead.  But  it  was  not  so  to  him,  he  only  felt 
like  the  desert  animal  which,  wounded,  repulses  every 
healing  hand,  and  only  seeks  to  die  alone. 

There  was  only  one  vulnerable,  one  tender,  nerve  in 
him,  and  this  was  the  instinct  of  his  genius.  He  had 
been  nurtured  in  hardihood,  and  had  drawn  in  endur- 
ance with  every  breath  of  his  native  air  ;  he  would  have 
borne  physical  ills  without  one  visible  pang,  and  would 
have  been  indifferent  to  all  mortal  suffering;  but  for  the 
powers  in  him  for  the  art  he  adored,  he  had  a  child's 
weakness,  a  woman's  softness. 

He  could  not  bear  to  die  without  leaving  behind  his 
life  some  work  the  world  would  cherish. 

Call  it  folly,  call  it  madness,  it  is  both ;  the  ivory  Zeus 
that  was  to  give  its  sculptor  immortality  lives  but  in 
tradition;  the  bronze  Athene  that  was  to  guard  the 
Piraeus  in  eternal  liberty  has  long  been  leveled  with  the 
dust;  yet  with  every  age  the  artist  still  gives  life  for 
fame,  still  cries,  "  Let  my  body  perish,  but  make  my 
work  immortal  1" 

It  was  this  in  him  now  which  stirred  his  heart  with  a 
new  and  gentler  emotion  ;  emotion  which,  while  half  dis- 
gust was  also  half  gladness.  This  food  was  alms-given, 
since  he  had  not  earned  it,  and  yet — by  means  of  this 
sheer  bodily  subsistence — it  would  be  possible  for  him  to 
keep  alive  those  dreams,  that  strength  by  which  he  still 
believed  it  in  him  to  compel  his  fame  from  men. 

He  stood  before  the  Phcebus  in  Pherae,  thinking;  it 
stung  him  with  a  bitter  torment;  it  humiliated  him  with 
a  hateful  burden — this  debt  which  came  he  knew  not 
whence,  and  which  he  never  might  be  able  to  repay. 
And  yet  his  heart  was  strangely  moved;  it  seemed  to 
him  that  the  fate  which  thus  wantonly,  and  with  such 
curious  persistence,  placed  life  back  into  his  hands,  must 
needs  be  one  that  would  bear  no  common  fruit. 

He  opposed  himself  no  more  to  it.  He  bent  his  head 
and  broke  bread,  and  ate  and  drank  of  the  red  wine : — 
he  did  not  thank  God  or  man  as  he  broke  his  fast;  he 
only  looked  in  the  mocking  eyes  of  Hermes,  and  said  in 
his  heart: 

"  Since  I  must  live,  I  will  triumph." 


FOLLE-FARINE.  239 

And  Hermes  smiled :  Hermes  the  wise,  who  had 
bought  and  sold  the  generations  of  men  so  long  ago  it) 
the  golden  age,  and  who  knew  so  well  how  they  would 
barter  away  their  greatness  and  their  gladness,  their 
bodies  and  their  souls,  for  one  sweet  strain  of  his  hollow 
reed  pipe,  for  one  sweet  glance  of  his  soulless  Pandora's 
eyes. 

Hermes — Hermes  the  liar,  Hermes  the  wise — knew 
how  men's  oaths  weratkept. 


CHAPTER    II. 

At  the  close  of  that  day  Claudis  Flamma  discovered 
that  he  had  been  robbed — robbed  more  than  once :  he 
swore  and  raved  and  tore  his  hair  for  loss  of  a  little 
bread  and  meat  and  oil  and  a  flagon  of  red  wine.  He 
did  not  suspect  his  granddaughter  ;  accusing  her  perpet- 
ually of  sins  of  which  she  was  innocent,  he  did  not  once 
associate  her  in  thought  with  the  one  offense  which  she 
had  committed.  He  thought  that  the  window  of  his 
storehouse  had  been  forced  from  the  exterior;  he  made 
no  doubt  that  his  spoiler  was  some  vagabond  from  one 
of  the  river  barges.  Through  such  tramps  his  henhouse 
and  his  apple-lofts  had  often  previously  been  invaded. 

She  heard  his  lamentations  and  imprecations  in  un- 
broken silence;  he  did  not  question  her;  and  without  a 
lie  she  was  able  to  keep  her  secret. 

In  her  own  sight  she  had  done  a  foul  thing — a  thing 
that  her  own  hunger  had  never  induced  her  to  do.  She 
did  not  seek  to  reconcile  herself  to  her  action  by  any  re- 
flection that  she  had  only  taken  what  she  had  really 
earned  a  thousand  times  over  by  her  service ;  her  mind 
was  not  sufficiently  instructed,  and  was  of  too  truthful  a 
mould  to  be  capable  of  the  deft  plea  of  a  sophistry.  She 
could  dare  the  thing;  and  do  it,  and  hold  her  peace  about 
it,  though  she  should  be  scourged  to  speak ;  but  she 
could  not  tamper  with  it  to  excuse  it  to  herself;  for  this 
she  had  neither  the  cunning  nor  the  cowardice. 


240  FOLLE-FARINE. 

Why  had  she  done  it  ? — done  for  a  stranger  what  no 
pressure  of  need  had  made  her  do  for  her  own  wants  ? 
She  did  not  ask  herself;  she  followed  her  instinct.  He 
allured  her  with  his  cairn  and  kingly  beauty,  which  was 
like  nothing  else  her  eyes  had  ever  seen  ;  and  she  was 
drawn  by  an  irresistible  attraction  to  this  life  which  she 
had  bought  at  the  price  of  her  own  from  the  gods.  Yet 
stronger  even  than  this  sudden  human  passion  which  had 
entered  into  her  was  the  dread  Jpst  he  whom  she  had 
ransomed  from  his  death  should  he  know  his  debt  to 
her. 

Under  such  a  dread,  she  never  opened  her  lips  to  any 
one  on  this,  thing  which  she  had  done.  Silence  was 
natural  to  her ;  she  spoke  so  rarely,  that  many  in  the 
province  believed  her  to  be  dumb;  no  sympathy  had 
ever  been  shown  to  her  to  woo  her  to  disclose  either  the 
passions  that  burned  latent  in  her  veins,  or  the  tenderness 
that  trembled  stifled  in  her  heart. 

Thrice  again  did  she  take  food  and  fuel  to  the  water- 
tower  undetected,  both  by  the  man  whom  she  robbed, 
and  the  man  whom  she  succored.  Thrice  again  did  she 
find  her  way  to  the  desolate  chamber  in  its  owner's 
absence  and  refill  the  empty  platters  and  warm  afresh  the 
cold  blank  hearth.  Thrice  again  did  Claudis  Flam  ma 
note  the  diminution  of  his  stores,  and  burnish  afresh  his 
old  rusty  fowling-piece,  and  watch  half  the  night  on  his 
dark  staircase,  and  prepare  with  his  own  hands  a  jar  of 
poisoned  honey  and  a  bag  of  poisoned  wheat,  which  he 
placed,  with  a  cruel  chuckle  of  grim  glee,  to  tempt  the 
eyes  of  his  spoilers. 

But  the  spoiler  being  of  his  own  household,  saw  this 
trap  set,  and  was  aware  of  it. 

In  a  week  or  two  the  need  for  these  acts  which  she 
hated  ceased.  She  learned  that  the  stranger  for  whom 
she  thus  risked  her  body  and  soul,  had  found  a  boatman's 
work  upon  the  water,  which,  although  a  toil  rough  and 
rude,  and  but  poorly  paid,  still  sufficed  to  give  him  bread. 
Though  she  herself  was  so  pressed  with  hunger,  many  a 
time,  that  as  she  went  through  the  meadows  and  hedge- 
rows she  was  glad  to  crush  in  her  teeth  the  tender  shoots 
of  the  briers  and  the  acrid  berry  of  the  brambles,  she 


FOLLE-FARINE.  241 

never  again,  unbidden,  touched  so  much  as   a  mouldy 
crust  thrown  out  to  be  eaten  by  the  poultry. 

Flamma,  counting  his  possessions  greedily  night  and 
morning,  blessed  the  saints  for  the  renewed  safety  of  his 
dwelling,  and  cast  forth  the  poisoned  wheat  as  a  thank- 
offering  to  the  male  birds  who  were  forever  flying  to  and 
fro  their  nested  mates  in  the  leafless  boughs  above  the 
earliest  violets,  and  whose  little  throats  were  strangled 
even  in  their  glad  floo^of  nuptial  song,  and  whose  soft 
bright  eyes  grew  dull  in  death  ere  even  they  had  looked 
upon  the  springtide  sun. 

For  it  was  thus  ever  that  Folle-Farine  saw  men  praise 
God. 

She  took  their  death  to  her  own  door,  sorrowing  and 
full  of  remorse. 

"  Had  I  never  stolen  the  food,  these  birds  might  never 
have  perished,"  she  thought,  as  she  saw  the  rosy  throats 
of  the  robins  and  bullfinches  turned  upward  in  death  on 
the  turf. 

She  blamed  herself  bitterly  with  an  aching  heart. 

The  fatality  which  makes  human  crime  recoil  on  the 
innocent  creatures  of  the  animal  world  oppressed  her 
with  its  heavy  and  hideous  injustice.  Their  God  was 
good,  they  said  :  yet  for  her  sin  and  her  grandsire's 
greed  the  harmless  song-birds  died  by  the  score  in  tor- 
ment. 

"How  shall  a  God  be  good  who  is  not  just?"  she 
thought.  In  this  mute  young  lonely  soul  of  hers  Nature 
had  sown  a  strong  passion  for  justice,  a  strong  instinct 
towards  what  was  righteous. 

As  the  germ  of  a  plant  born  in  darkness  underground 
will,  by  sheer  instinct,  uncurl  its  colorless  tendrils,  and 
thrust  them  through  crevices  and  dust,  and  the  close 
structure  of  mortared  stones,  until  they  reach  the  light 
and  grow  green  and  strong  in  it,  so  did  her  nature  strive, 
of  its  own  accord,  through  the  gloom  enveloping  it; 
towards  those  moral  laws  which  in  all  ages  and  all  lands 
remain  the  same,  no  matter  what  deity  be  worshiped, 
or  what  creed  be  called  the  truth. 

Her  nascent  mind  was  darkened,  oppressed,  bewil- 
dered, perplexed,  even  like  the  plant  which,  forcing  itself 

21 


242  FOLLE-FARINE. 

upward  from  its  cellar,  opens  its  leaves  not  in  pure  air 
and  under  a  blue  sky,  but  in  the  reek  and  smoke  and 
fetid  odors  of  a  city. 

Yet,  like  the  plant,  she  vaguely  felt  that  light  was 
somewhere  ;  and  as  vaguely  sought  it. 

With  most  days  she  took  her  grandsire's  boat  to  and 
fro  the  town,  fetching  or  carrying ;  there  was  no  mode 
of  transit  so  cheap  to  him  as  this,  whose  only  cost  was 
her  fatigue.  With  each  passage  up  and  down  the  river, 
she  passed  by  the  dwelling  of  Arslan. 

Sometimes  she  saw  him  ;  once  or  twice,  in  the  twilight, 
he  spoke  to  her ;  she  only  bent  her  head  to  hide  her  face 
from  him,  and  rowed  more  quickly  on  her  homeward  way 
in  silence.  At  other  times,  in  his  absence,  and  when  she 
was  safe  from  any  detection,  she  entered  the  dismal  soli- 
tudes wherein  he  labored,  and  gazed  in  rapt  and  awed 
amazement  at  the  shapes  that  were  shadowed  forth  upon 
the  walls. 

The  service  by  which  he  gained  his  daily  bread  was 
on  the  waters,  and  took  him  often  leagues  away — simple 
hardy  toil,  among  fishers  and  canal-carriers  and  barge- 
men. But  it  left  him  some  few  days,  and  all  his  nights, 
free  for  art ;  and  never  in  all  the  years  of  his  leisure  had 
his  fancy  conceived,  and  his  hand  created,  more  exquisite 
dreams  and  more  splendid  fantasies  than  now  in  this 
bitter  and  cheerless  time,  when  he  labored  amidst  the 
poorest  for  the  bare  bread  of  life. 

"  Des  belles  choses  peuvent  se  faire  dans  une  cave :" 
and  in  truth  the  gloom  of  the  cellar  gives  birth  to  an  art 
more  sublime  than  the  light  of  the  palace  can  ever  beget. 

Suffering  shortens  the  years  of  the  artist,  and  kills  him 
oftentimes  ere  his  prime  be  reached ;  but  in  suffering 
alone  are  all  great  works  conceived. 

The  senses,  the  passions,  the  luxuries,  the  lusts  of  the 
flesh,  the  deliriums  of  the  desires,  the  colors,  the  melo- 
dies, the  fragrance,  the  indolences, — all  that  make  the 
mere  "living  of  life"  delightful,  all  go  to  enrich  and  to 
deepen  the  human  genius  which  steeps  itself  in  them  ;  but 
it  is  in  exile  from  these  that  alone  it  can  rise  to  its  greatest. 

The  grass  of  the  Holy  River  gathers  perfume  from  the 
marvelous  suns  and  the  moonless  nights,  and  the  gor- 


FOLLE-FARINE.  243 

geous  bloom  of  the  East,  from  the  aromatic  breath  of  the 
leopard  and  the  perfume  of  the  fallen  pomegranate  ;  from 
the  sacred  oil  that  floats  in  the  lamps,  and  the  caress  of 
the  girl-bathers'  feet  and  the  myrrh-dropping  unguents 
that  glide  from  the  maidens'  bare  limbs  in  the  moonlight, 
— the  grass  holds  and  feeds  on  them  all.  But  not  till  the 
grass  has  been  torn  from  the  roots,  and  been  crushed, 
and  been  bruised  and  destroyed,  can  the  full  odors  exhale 
of  all  it  has  tasted  and  treasured. 

Even  thus  the  imagination  of  man  may  be  great,  but  it 
can  never  be  at  its  greatest  until  one  serpent,  with  merci- 
less fangs,  has  bitten  it  through  and  through,  and  im- 
pregnated it  with  passion  and  with  poison — that  one 
deathless  serpent  which  is  Memory. 

Arslan  had  never  been  more  ceaselessly  pursued  by 
innumerable  fantasies,  and  never  had  given  to  these  a 
more  terrible  force,  a  more  perfect  utterance,  than  now, 
when  the  despair  which  possessed  him  was  absolute, — 
when  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  had  striven  in  his  last 
strife  with  fate,  and  been  thrown  never  to  rise  again, — 
when  he  kept  his  body  alive  by  such  soulless,  ceaseless 
labor  as  that  of  the  oxen  in  the  fields, — when  he  saw 
every  hour  drift  by,  barren,  sullen,  painful, — when  only 
some  dull  yet  stanch  instinct  of  virility  held  him  back 
from  taking  his  own  life  in  the  bleak  horror  of  these 
fruitless  days, — when  it  seemed  to  him  that  his  oath  be- 
fore Hermes  to  make  men  call  him  famous  was  idle  as 
the  sigh  of  a  desert  wind  through  the  hollow  ears  of  a 
skull  bleaching  white  on  the  sand. 

Yet  he  had  never  done  greater  things, — never  in  the 
long  years  through  which  he  had  pursued  and  studied  art. 

With  the  poor  wage  that  he  earned  by  labor  he  bought 
by  degrees  the  tools  and  pigments  lacking  to  him,  and 
lived  on  the  scantiest  and  simplest  food,  that  he  might 
have  wherewith  to  render  into  shape  and  color  the  imag- 
inations of  his  brain. 

And  it  was  on  these  that  the  passionate,  wondering, 
half-blinded  eyes  of  Folle-Farine  looked  with  awe  and 
adoration  in  those  lonely  hours  when  she  stole,  in  his 
absence,  into  his  chamber,  and  touching  nothing,  scarcely 
daring  to  breathe  aloud,  crouched  on  the  bare  pavement 


244  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

mute  and  motionless,  and  afraid  with  a  fear  that  was  the 
sweetest  happiness  her  brief  youth  had  ever  knowu. 

Though  her  own  kind  had  neglected  and  proscribed 
her,  with  one  accord,  there  had  been  enough  in  the  little 
world  surrounding  her  to  feed  the  imaginative  senses 
latent  in  her, — enough  of  the  old  mediaeval  fancy,  of  the 
old  ecclesiastical  beauty,  of  the  old  monastic  spirit,  to 
give  her  a  consciousness,  though  a  dumb  one,  of  the  ex- 
istence of  art. 

Untaught  though  she  was,  and  harnessed  to  the  dreary 
mill-wheel  round  of  a  hard  physical  toil,  she  yet  had  felt 
dimly  the  charm  of  the  place  in  which  she  dwelt. 

Where  the  fretted  pinnacles  rose  in  hundreds  against 

the  sky, where  the  common  dwellings  of  the  poor  were 

paneled  and  parquetted  and  carved  in  a  thousand  fash- 
ions,—where  the  graceful  and  the  grotesque  and  the 
terrible  were  mingled  in  an  inextricable,  and  yet  ex- 
quisite, confusion,— where  the  gray  squat  jug  that  went 
to  the  well,  and  the  jutting  beam  to  which  the  clothes' 
line  was  fastened,  and  the  creaking  sign  that  swung  above 
the  smallest  wineshop,  and  the  wooden  gallery  on  which 
the  poorest  troll  hung  out  her  many-colored  rags,  had  all 
some  trace  of  a  dead  art,  some  fashioning  by  a  dead 
hand, — where  all  these  were  it  was  not  possible  for  any 
creature  dowered  by  nature  with  any  poetic  instinct  to 
remain  utterly  unmoved  and  unawakened  in  their  midst. 

Of  the  science  and  the  execution  of  art  she  was  still 
absolutely  ignorant ;  the  powers  by  which  it  was  created 
still  seemed  a  magic  incomprehensible,  and  not  human ; 
but  its  meaning  she  felt  with  that  intensity  which  is  the 
truest  homage  of  all  homage  to  its  influence. 

Dav  after  day,  therefore,  she  returned  and  gazed  on 
the  three  gods  of  forgetful ness,  and  on  all  the  innumer- 
able forms  and  fables  which  bore  them  company ;  the 
virgin  field  of  her  unfilled  mind  receiving  the  seeds  of 
thought  and  of  fancy  that  were  scattered  so  largely  in 
this  solitude,  lying  waste,  bearing  no  harvest. 

Of  these  visits  Arslan  himself  knew  nothing;  towards 
him  her  bold  wild  temper  was  softened  to  the  shyness  of 
a  doe. 

She  dreaded  lest  he  should  ever  learn  what  she  had 


FOLLE-FARWE.  245 

done ;  and  she  stole  in  and  out  of  the  old  granary,  un- 
seen by  all,  with  the  swiftness  and  the  stealthiness  which 
she  shared  in  common  with  other  untamed  animals, 
which,  like  her,  shunned  all  man-  and  womankind. 

And  this  secret — in  itself  so  innocent,  yet  for  which 
she  would  at  times  blush  in  her  loneliness,  with  a  cruel 
heat  that  burnt  all  over  her  face  and  frame — changed  her 
life,  transfigured  it  from  its  objectless,  passionless,  brutish 
dullness  and  monotony,  into  dreams  and  into  desires. 

For  the  first  time  she  had  in  her  joy  and  fear;  for  the 
first  time  she  became  human. 

All  the  week  through  he  wrought  perforce  by  night ;  the 
great  windows  stood  wide  open  to  the  bright,  cold  moon 
of  early  spring ;  he  worked  only  with  black  and  white,  using 
color  only  at  sunrise,  or  on  the  rare  days  of  his  leisure. 

Often  at  nightfall  she  left  her  loft,  as  secretly  as  a  fox 
its  lair,  and  stole  down  the  river,  and  screened  herself 
among  the  grasses,  and  watched  him  where  he  labored 
in  the  mingling  light  of  the  moon,  and  of  the  oil-kmp 
burning  behind  him. 

She  saw  these  things  grow  from  beneath  his  hand,  these 
mighty  shapes  created  by  him  ;  and  he  seemed  to  her  like 
a  god,  with  the  power  to  beget  worlds  at  his  will,  and  all 
human  life  in  its  full  stature  out  from  a  little  dust. 

The  contrast  of  this  royal  strength,  of  this  supreme 
power  which  he  wielded,  with  the  helpless  exhaustion  of 
the  body  in  which  she  had  found  him  dying,  smote  her 
with  a  sorrow  and  a  sweetness  that  were  like  nothing  she 
had  ever  owned.  That  a  man  could  summon  hosts  at  his 
command  like  this,  yet  perish  for  a  crust ! — that  fusion  of 
omnipotence  and  powerlessness,  which  is  the  saddest  and 
the  strangest  of  all  the  sad  strange  things  of  genius, 
awoke  an  absorbing  emotion  in  her. 

She  watched  him  thus  for  hours  in  the  long  nights  of 
a  slow-footed  spring,  in  whose  mists  and  chills  and  heavy 
dews  her  inured  frame  took  no  more  harm  than  did  the 
green  corn  shooting  through  the  furrows. 

She  was  a  witness  to  his  solitude.  She  saw  the  fancies 
of  his  brain  take  form.  She  saw  the  sweep  of  his  arm 
call  up  on  the  blank  of  the  wall,  or  on  the  pale  spaces  of 
the  canvas,  these  images  which  for  her  had  alike  such 

21* 


248  FOLLE-FARWE. 

color  and  glitter,  showed  like  a  gaudy  red  tulip  in  bloom 
amidst  tufts  of  thyme. 

The  old  wrinkled  leathern  awnings  of  the  market-stalls 
glowed  like  copper  in  the  brightness  of  the  noon.  The 
red  tiles  of  the  houses  edging  the  great  square  were 
gilded  with  yellow  houseleeks. 

The  little  children  ran  hither  and  thither  with  big 
bunches  of  primroses  or  sheaves  of  blue  wood-hyacinths, 
singing.  The  red  and  blue  serges  of  the  young  girls' 
bodices  were  like  the  gay  hues  of  the  anemones  in  their 
baskets ;  and  the  brown  faces  of  the  old  dames  under  the 
white  roofing  of  their  headgear  were  like  the  russet  faces 
of  the  home-kept  apples  they  had  garnered  through  all 
the  winter. 

Everywhere  in  the  shade  of  the  flapping  leather,  and 
the  darkness  of  the  wooden  porches,  there  were  the  ten- 
der blossoms  of  the  field  and  forest,  of  the  hedge  and 
garden.  The  azure  of  the  hyacinths,  the  pale  saffron  of 
the  primroses,  the  cool  hues  of  the  meadow  daffodils,  the 
ruby  eyes  of  the  cultured  jonquils,  gleamed  among  wet 
ferns,  gray  herbs,  and  freshly  budded  leafage.  Plovers' 
eggs'nestled  in  moss-lined  baskets;  sheaves  of  velvet- 
coated  wallflowers  poured  fragrance  on  the  air;  great 
plumes  of  lilac  nodded  on  the  wind,  and  amber  feathers 
of  laburnum  waved  above  the  homelier  masses  of  mint 
and  marjoram,  and  sage  and  saxafrage. 

It  was  high  noon,  but  the  women  still  found  leisure- 
time  to  hear  the  music  of  their  own  tongues,  loud  and 
continuous  as  the  clacking  of  mill  paddles. 

In  one  corner  an  excited  little  group  was  gathered 
round  the  stall  of  a  favorite  flower-seller,  who  wore  a  bright 
crimson  gown,  and  a  string  of  large  silver  beads  about 
her  neck,  and  a  wide  linen  cap  that  shaded  her  pretty 
rosy  face  as  a  great  snowy  mushroom  may  grow  between 
the  sun  and  a  little  ruddy  wild  strawberry. 

Her  brown  eyes  were  now  brimming  over  with  tears 
where  she  stood  surrounded  by  all  the  treasures  of  spring. 
She  held  clasped  in  her  arms  a  great  pot  with  a  young 
almond-tree  growing  in  it,  and  she  was  weeping  as 
though  her  heart  would  break,  because  a  tile  had  fallen 
from°a  roof  above  and  crushed  low  all  its  pink  splendor 
of  blossom. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  249 

"  I  saw  her  look  at  it,"  she  muttered.  "  Look  at  it  as 
she  passed  with  her  wicked  eyes ;  and  a  black  cat  on  the 
roof  mewed  to  her  ;  and  that  moment  the  tile  fell.  Oh, 
my  almond-tree!  oh,  my  little  darling!  the  only  one  I 
saved  out  of  three  through  the  frosts ;  the  very  one 
that  was  to  have  gone  this  very  night  to  Paris." 

"  Thou  art  not  alone,  Edmee,"  groaned  an  old  woman, 
tottering  from  her  egg-stall  with  a  heap  of  ruffled,  blood- 
stained, brown  plumage  held  up  in  her  hand.  "Look! 
As  she  went  by  my  poor  brown  hen — the  best  sitter  I 
have,  good  for  eggs  with  every  sunrise  fron  Lent  to  Noel 
— just  cackled  and  shook  her  tail  at  her;  and  at  that  very 
instant  a  huge  yellow  dog  rushed  in  and  killed  the 
blessed  bird — killed  her  in  her  basket !  A  great  yellow 
beast  that  no  one  had  ever  seen  before,  and  that  vanished 
again  into  the  earth,  like  lightning." 

"  Not  worse  than  she  did  to  my  precious  Remy,"  said 
a  tanner's  wife,  who  drew  after  her,  clinging  to  her 
skirts,  a  little  lame,  misshapen,  querulous  child. 

"  She  hath  the  evil  eye,"  said  sternly  an  old  man  who 
had  served  in  the  days  of  his  boyhood  in  the  Army  of 
Italy,  as  he  sat  washing  fresh  lettuces  in  a  large  brass 
bawl,  by  his  grandson's  herb-stall. 

"You  remember  how  we  met  her  in  the  fields  last 
Feast-night  of  the  Three  Kings?"  asked  a  youth  looking 
up  from  plucking  the  feathers  out  from  a  living,  strug- 
gling, moaning  goose.  M  Coming  singing  through  the 
fog  like  nothing  earthly ;  and  a  moment  later  a  torch 
caught  little  Jocelin's  curls  and  burnt  him  till  he  was  so 
hideous  that  his  mother  could  scarce  have  known  him. 
You  remember?" 

"  Surely  we  remember,"  they  cried  in  a  hearty  chorus 
round  the  broken  almond-tree.  u  Was  there  not  the  good 
old  Dax  this  very  winter,  killed  by  her  if  ever  any  creat- 
ure were  killed  by  foul  means,  though  the  law  would  never 
listen  to  the  Flandrins  when  they  said  so?" 

"  And  little  Bernardou,"  added  one  who  had  not  hitherto 
spoken.  "  Little  Bernardou  died  a  month  after  his  gran- 
dam,  in  hospital.  She  had  cast  her  eye  on  him,  and  the 
poor  little  lad  never  rallied." 

"Ajetlatrice  ever  brings  misfortune,"  muttered  the  old 


250  FOLLE-FAR1NE. 

soldier  of  Napoleon,  washing  his  last  lettuce  and  lighting 
a  fresh  pipe. 

"  Or  does  worse,"  muttered  the  mother  of  the  crippled 
child.  "  She  is  not  for  nothing  the  devil's  daughter,  mark 
you." 

"Nay,  indeed,"  said  an  old  woman,  knitting  from  a 
ball  of  wool  with  which  a  kitten  played  among  the  strewn 
cabbage-leaves  and  the  crushed  sweet-smelling  thyme. 
"  Nay,  was  it  not  only  this  very  winter  that  my  son's  little 
youngest  boy  threw  a  stone  at  her,  just  for  luck,  as  she 
went  by  in  her  boat  through  the  town ;  and  it  struck  her 
and  drew  blood  from  her  shoulder;  and  that  self-same 
night  a  piece  of  the  oaken  carvings  in  the  ceiling  gave 
way  and  dropped  upon  the  little  angel  as  he  slept,  and 
broke  his  arm  above  the  elbow  : — she  is  a  witch  ;  there  is 
no  question  but  she  is  a  witch." 

"  If  I  were  sure  so,  I  would  think  it  well  to  kill  her," 
murmured  the  youth,  as  he  stifled  the  struggling  bird  be- 
tween his  knees. 

"  My  sister  met  her  going  through  the  standing  corn 
last  harvest-time,  and  the  child  she  brought  forth  a  week 
after  was  born  blind,  and  is  blind  now,"  said  a  hard- 
visaged  woman,  washing  turnips  in  a  basin  of  water.     „ 

"I  was  black-and-blue  for  a  month  when  she  threw  me 
down,  and  took  from  me  that  hawk  I  had  trapped,  and 
went  and  fastened  my  wrist  in  the  iron  instead  1"  hissed 
a  boy  of  twelve,  in  a  shrill  piping  treble,  as  he  slit  the 
tongue  of  a  quivering  starling. 

"  They  say  she  dances  naked,  by  moonlight,  in  the 
water  with  imps,"  cried  a  bright  little  lad  who  was  at 
play  with  the  kitten. 

"  She  is  a  witch,  there  is  no  doubt  about  that,"  said 
again  the  old  woman  who  sat  knitting  on  the  stone  bench 
in  the  sun. 

"  And  her  mother  such  a  saint  1"  sighed  another  old 
dame  who  was  grouping  green  herbs  together  for  salads. 
And  all  the  while  the  girl  Edmee  clasped  her  almond- 
tree  and  sobbed  over  it. 

"  If  she  were  only  here,"  swore  Edmee's  lover,  under 
his  breath. 

At  that  moment  the  accused  came  towards  them,  erect 
in  the  full  light. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  251 

She  had  passed  through  the  market  with  a  load  of 
herbs  and  flowers  for  one  of  the  chief  hostelries  in  the 
square,  and  was  returning  with  the  flat  broad  basket 
balanced  empty  on  her  head. 

.Something  of  their  mutterings  and  curses  reached  her, 
but  she  neither  hastened  nor  slackened  her  pace ;  she  came 
on  towards  them  with  her  free,  firm  step,  and  her  lustrous 
eyes  flashing  hard  against  the  sun. 

She  gave  no  sign  that  she  had  heard  except  that  the 
blood  darkened  a  little  in  her  cheeks,  and  her  mouth  curled 
with  a  haughtier  scorn.  But  the  sight  of  her,  answering 
in  that  instant  to  their  hate,  the  sight  of  her  with  the 
sunshine  on  her  scarlet  sash  and  her  slender  limbs,  added 
impulse  to  their  rage. 

They  had  talked  themselves  into  a  passionate  belief  in 
her  as  a  thing  hellborn  and  unclean,  that  brought  all 
manner  of  evil  fates  among  them.  They  knew  that  holy 
water  had  never  baptized  her ;  that  neither  cross  nor 
chrism  had  ever  exorcised  her;  that  a  church's  door  had 
never  opened  to  her;  they  had  heard  their  children  hoot 
her  many  a  time  unrebuked,  they  had  always  hated  her 
with  the  cruelty  begotten  by  a  timid  cowardice  or  a 
selfish  dread.  They  were  now  ripe  to  let  their  hate  take 
shape  in  speech  and  act. 

The  lover  of  Edmee  loosened  his  hand  from  the  silver 
beads  about  her  throat,  and  caught  up  instead  a  stone. 

"Let  us  see  if  her  flesh  feels  I"  he  cried,  and  cast  it. 
It  fell  short  of  her,  being  ill  aimed ;  she  did  not  slacken 
her  speed,  nor  turn  out  of  her  course ;  she  still  came 
towards  them  erect  and  with  an  even  tread. 

"Who  lamed  my  Remy?"  screamed  the  cripple's 
mother. 

"Who  broke  my  grandson's  arm?"  cackled  the  old 
woman  that  sat  knitting. 

"  Who  withered  my  peach-tree  ?"  the  old  gardener 
hooted. 

"Who  freed  the  devil-bird  and  put  me  on  the  trap?" 
yelled  the  boy  with  the  starling. 

"Who  flung  the  tile  on  the  almond?"  shouted  the 
flower-girl's  lover. 

"  Who  made  my  sister  bring  forth  a  little  beast,  blind 


252  FOLLE-FARINE. 

as  a  inole  V  shrieked  the  woman,  washing  in  the  brazen 
bowl. 

"  Who  is  a  witch  ? — who  dances  naked  ? — who  bathes 
with  devils  at  the  full  moon  V1  cried  the  youth  who  had 
plucked  the  goose  bare,  alive;  and  he  stooped  for  a  peb- 
ble, and  aimed  better  than  his  comrade,  and  flung  it  at 
her  as  she  came. 

"  It  is  a  shame  to  see  the  child  of  Heine  Flamma  so 
dealt  with  !"  murmured  the  old  creature  that  was  group- 
ing her  salads.     But  her  voice  found  no  echo. 

The  old  soldier  even  rebuked  her.  "Ajettatrice  should 
be  killed  for  the  good  of  the  people,"  he  mumbled. 

Meanwhile  she  came  nearer  and  nearer.  The  last 
stone  had  struck  her  upon  the  arm  ;  but  it  had  drawn  no 
blood;  she  walked  on  with  firm,  slow  steps  into  their 
midst;  unfaltering. 

The  courage  did  not  touch  them ;  they  thought  it  only 
the  hardihood  of  a  thing  that  was  devil-begotten. 

"  She  is  always  mute  like  that ;  she  cannot  feel. 
"Strike,  strike,  strike!"  cried  the  cripple's  mother;  and 
the  little  cripple  himself  clapped  his  small  hands  and 
screamed  his  shrill  laughter.  The  youths,  obedient  and 
nothing  loth,  rained  stones  on  her  as  fast  as  their  hands 
could  fling  them.  Still  she  neither  paused  nor  quailed  ; 
but  came  on  straightly,  steadily,  with  her  face  set  against 
the  light. 

Their  impatience  and  their  eagerness  made  their 
aim  uncertain  ;  the  stones  fell  fast  about  her  on  every 
side,  but  one  alone  struck  her — a  jagged  flint  that  fell 
where  the  white  linen  skirt  opened  on  her  chest.  It  cut 
the  skin,  and  the  blood  started;  the  children  shrieked 
and  danced  with  delight:  the  youths  rushed  at  her  in- 
flamed at  once  with  her  beauty  and  their  own  savage 
hate. 

i  "  Stone  her  to  death  !  Stone  her  to  death  !"  they 
shouted ;  she  only  laughed,  and  held  her  head  erect  and 
stood  motionless  where  they  arrested  her,  without  the 
blood  once  paling  in  her  face  or  her  eyes  once  losing  their 
luminous  calm  scorn. 

The  little  cripple  clapped  his  hands,  climbing  on  his 
mother's  back  to  see  the  sight,  and  his  mother  screamed 


FOLLE-FARINE.  253 

again  and  again  above  bis  laughter.  "  Strike  !  strike  1 
strike !" 

One  of  tbe  lads  seized  ber  in  bis  arms  to  force  ber  on 
ber  knees  wbile  tbe  others  stoned  ber.  The  touch  of  him 
roused  all  the  fire  slumbering  in  her  blood.  She  twisted 
herself  round  in  his  hold  with  a  movement  so  rapid  that 
it  served  to  free  her  ;  struck  him  full  on  the  eyes  with  her 
clinched  hand  in  a  blow  that  sent  him  stunned  and  stag- 
gering back ;  then,  swiftly  as  lightning  flash,  drew  her 
knife  from  her  girdle,  and  striking  out  with  it  right  and 
left,  dashed  through  the  people,  who  scattered  from  her 
path  as  sheep  from  the  spring  of  a  hound.  • 

Slowly  and  with  her  face  turned  full  upon  them,  she 
backed  her  way  across  the  market-place.  The  knife, 
turned  blade  outward,  was  pressed  against  her  chest. 
None  of  them  dared  to  follow  her;  they  thought  her 
invulnerable  and  possessed. 

She  moved  calmly  with  a  firm  tread  backward — back- 
ward— backward ;  holding  her  foes  at  bay ;  the  scarlet 
sash  on  her  loins  flashing  bright  in  the  sun ;  her  level 
brows  bent  together  as  a  tiger  bends  his  .ere  he  leaps. 
They  watched  her,  huddling  together  frightened  and 
silent.  Even  the  rabid  cries  of  the  cripple's  mother  had 
ceased.  On  tbe  edge  of  the  great  square  she  paused  a 
moment;  the  knife  still  held  at  her  chest,  her  mouth 
curled  in  contemptuous  laughter. 

''Strike  now!"  she  cried  to  them;  and  she  dropped 
ber  weapon,  and  stood  still. 

But  there  was  not  one  among  them  who  dared  lift  his 
hand.  There  was  not  so  much  as  a  word  that  answered 
ber.  - 

She  laughed  aloud,  and  waited  for  their  attack,  while 
the  bell  in  the  tower  above  them  tolled  loudly  the  strokes 
of  noon.  No  one  among  them  stirred.  Even  the  shrill 
pipe  of  the  lame  boy's  rejoicing  bad  sunk,  and  was 
still. 

At  that  moment,  through  the  golden  haze  of  sun- 
beams and  dust  that  bung  above  the  crowd,  she  saw 
the  red  gleam  of  the  soldiers  of  the  state ;  and  their 
heavy  tramp  echoed  on  the  silence  as  thaj  hastened  to 
the  scene  of  tumult.     She  had  no  faith  in  any  justice 

22 


254  FOLLE-FARWE. 

which  these  would  deal  her ;  had  they  not  once  dragged 
her  before  the  tribunal  of  their  law  because  she  had  forced 
asunder  the  iron  jaws  of  that  trap  in  the  oak  wood  to  give 
freedom  to  the  bleeding  hawk  that  was  struggling  in  it 
whilst  its  callow  birds  screamed  in  hunger  in  their  nest 
in  the  branches  above  ? 

She  had  no  faith  in  them  ;  nor  in  any  justice  of  men ; 
and  she  turned  and  went  down  a  twisting  lane  shaded 
from  the  sun,  and  ran  swiftly  as  a  doe  through  all  its 
turns,  and  down  the  steps  leading  to  the  water-side. 
There  her  boat  was  moored ;  she  entered  it,  and  pulled 
herself  slowly  down  the  river,  which  now  at  noontide  was 
almost  deserted,  whilst  the  shutters  of  the  houses  that 
edged  it  on  either  side  were  all  closed  to  keep  out  the  sun. 

A  boatman  stretched  half  asleep  upon  the  sacks  in  his 
barge  ;  a  horse  dozing  in  his  harness  on  the  towing-path  ; 
a  homeless  child  who  had  no  one  to  call  him  in  to  shelter 
from  the  heat,  and  who  sat  aud  dappled  his.  little  burning 
feet  in  the  flowing  water;  these  and  their  like  were  all 
there  were  here  to  look  on  her. 

She  rowed  herself  feebly  with  one  oar  gradually  out  of 
the  ways  of  the  town ;  her  left  arm  was  strained,  and  for 
the  moment,  useless  ;  her  shoulders  throbbed  with  bruises  ; 
and  the  wound  from  the  stone  still  bled.  She  stanched  the 
blood  by  degrees,  and  folded  the  linen  over  it,  and  went  on ; 
she  was  so  used  to  pain,  and  so  strong,  that  this  seemed 
to  her  to  be  but  little.  She  had  passed  through  similar 
scenes  before,  though  the  people  had  rarely  broken  into 
such  open  violence  towards  her,  except  on  that  winter's 
day  in  the  hut  of  Manon  Dax. 

The  heat  was  great,  though  the  season  was  but  mid- 
April. 

The  sky  was  cloudless ;  the  air  without  a  breeze.  The 
pink  blossoms  of  peach-trees  bloomed  between  the  old 
brown  walls  of  the  wooden  houses.  In  the  galleries, 
between  the  heads  of  saints  and  the  faces  of  fauns,  there 
were  tufts  of  home-bred  lilies  of  the  valley  and  thick 
flowering  bushes  of  golden  genista.  The  smell  of  mign- 
onette was  sweet  upon  the  languid  breeze,  and  here  and 
there,  from  out  the  darkness  of  some  open  casement,  some 
stove-forced  crimson  or  purple  azalea  shrub  glowed :  for 


FOLLE-FARINE.  255 

the  people's  merchandise  was  flowers,  and  all  the  silent 
water-streets  were  made  lovely  and  fragrant  by  their  fair 
abundance. 

The  tide  of  the  river  was  flowing  in,  the  stream  was 
swelling  over  all  the  black  piles,  and  the  broad  smooth 
strips  of  sand  that  were  visible  at  low  water ;  it  floated 
her  boat  inward  with  it  without  trouble  past  the  last 
houses  of  the  town,  past  the  budding  orchards  and  gray- 
stone  walls  of  the  outskirts,  past  the  meadows  and  the 
cornfields  and  the  poplars  of  the  open  country.  A  certain 
faintness  had  stolen  on  her  with  the  gliding  of  the  vessel 
and  the  dizzy  movement  of  the  water ;  pain  and  the  loss 
of  blood  filled  her  limbs  with  an  unfamiliar  weakness;  she 
felt  giddy  and  half  blind,  and  almost  powerless  to  guide 
her  course. 

When  she  had  reached  the  old  granary  where  it  stood 
among  the  waterdocks  and  rushes,  she  checked  the  boat 
almost  unconsciously,  and  let  it  drift  in  amidst  the  reeds 
and  lie  there,  and  pulled  herself  feebly  up  through  the 
shallow  pools.  Then  she  went  across  the  stone  sill  of  the 
casement  into  the  chamber  where  she  had  learned  to  live 
a  life  that  was  utterly  apart  from  the  actual  existence  to 
which  chance  had  doomed  her. 

It  was  the  height  of  noon;  at  such  an  hour  the  creator 
of  these  things  that  she  loved  was  always  absent  at  the 
toil  which  brought  him  his  bread  ;  she  knew  that  he  never 
returned  until  the  evening,  never  painted  except  at  earli- 
est dawn. 

The  place  was  her  own  in  the  freedom  of  solitude ;  all 
these  shapes  and  shadows  in  which  imagination  and  tra- 
dition had  taken  visible  shape  were  free  to  her;  she  had 
grown  to  love  them  with  a  great  passion,  to  seek  them 
as  consolers  and  as  friends.  She  crept  into  the  room  ; 
and  its  coolness,  its  calm,  its  dimmed  refreshing  light 
seemed  like  balm  after  the  noise  of  the  busy  market-place 
and  the  glare  of  the  cloudless  sunshine.  A  sick  sense  of 
fatigue  and  of  feebleness  had  assailed  her  more  strongly. 
She  dropped  down  in  the  gloom  of  the  place  on  the  broad, 
cold  flags  of  the  floor  in  the  deepest  shadow,  where  the 
light  from  without  did  not  reach,  and  beneath  the  cartoon 
of  the  gods  of  Oblivion. 


256  FOLLE-FARINE. 

Of  all  the  forms  with  which  he  had  peopled  its  loneli- 
ness, these  had  the  most  profound  influence  on  her  in 
their  fair,  passionless,  majestic  beauty,  in  which  it  seemed 
to  her  that  the  man  who  had  begotten  them  had  repeated 
his  own  likeness.  For  they  were  all  alike,  yet  unlike; 
of  the  same  form  and  feature,  yef  different  even  in  their 
strong  resemblance  ;  like  elder  and  younger  brethren  who 
hold  a  close  companionship.  For  Hypnos  was  still  but  a 
boy  with  his  blue-veined  eyelids  closed,  and  his  mouth  rosy 
and  parted  like  that  of  a  slumbering  child,  and  above  his 
golden  head  a  star  rose  in  the  purple  night.  Oneiros, 
standing  next,  was  a  youth  whose  eyes  smiled  as  though 
they  beheld  visions  that  were  welcome  to  him ;  in  his 
hand,  among  the  white  roses,  he  held  a  black  wand  of 
sorcery,  and  around  his  bended  head  there  hovered  a  dim 
silvery  nimbus.  Thanatos  alone  was  a  man  fully  grown  ; 
and  on  his  calm  and  colorless  face  there  were  blendecran 
unutterable  sadness,  and  an  unspeakable  peace ;  his  eyes 
were  fathomless,  far-reaching,  heavy  laden  with  thought, 
as  though  they  had  seen  at  once  the  heights  of  heaven 
and  the  depths  of  hell ;  and  he,  having  thus  seen,  and 
knowing  all  things,  had  learned  that  there  was  but  one 
good  possible  in  all  the  universe, — that  one  gift  which  his 
touch  gave,  and  which  men  in  their  blindness  shuddered 
from  and  cursed.  And  above  him  and  around  him  there 
was  a  great  darkness. 

So  the  gods  stood,  and  so  they  spoke,  even  to  her;, 
they  seemed  to  her  as  brethren,  masters,  friends— -these 
three  immortals  who  looked  down  on  her  in  their  mute 
majesty. 

They  are  the  gods  of  the  poor,  of  the  wretched,  of  the 
proscribed, — they  are  the  gods  who  respect  not  persons 
nor  palaces, — who  stay  with  the  exile  and  flee  from  the 

king, who  leave  the  tyrant  of  a  world  to  writhe  in 

torment,  and  call  a  smile  beautiful  as  the  morning  on  the 
face  of  a  beggar  child,— who  turn  from  the  purple  beds, 
where  wealth,  and  lust,  and  brutal  power  lie,  and  fill 
with  purest  visions  the  darkest  hours  of  the  loneliest 
nights  for  genius  and  youth,— they  are  the  gods  of  con- 
solation and  of  compensation, — the  gods  of  the  orphan,  of 
the  outcast,  of  the  poet,  of  the  prophet,  of  all  whose  bodies 


FOLLE-FARINE.  25T 

ache  with  the  infinite  pangs  of  famine,  and  whose  hearts 
ache  with  the  infinite  woes  of  the  world,  of  all  who  hunger 
with  the  body  or  with  the  soul. 

And  looking  at  them,  she  seemed  to  know  them  as  her 
only  friends, — as  the  only  rulers  who  ever  could  loose  the 
bands  of  her  fate  aud  let  her  forth  to  freedom — Sleep,  and 
Dreams,  and  Death. 

They  were  above  her  where  she  sank  upon  the  stone 
floor  ;  the  shadows  were  dark  upon  the  ground  ;  but  the 
sunrays  striking  through  the  distant  window  against  the 
opposite  wall  fell  across  the  golden  head  of  the  boy 
Hypnos,  and  played  before  his  silver  sandaled  feet. 

She  sat  gazing  at  him,  forgetful  of  her  woe,  her  task, 
the  populace  that  had  hooted  her  abroad,  the  stripes  that 
awaited  her  at  home.  The  answering  gaze  of  the  gods 
magnetized  her ;  the  poetic  virus  which  had  stirred 
dumbly  in  her  from  her  birth  awoke  in  her  bewildered 
brain.  Without  knowing  what  she  wanted,  she  longed 
for  freedom,  for  light,  for  passion,  for  peace,  for  love. 

Shadowy  fancies  passed  over  her  in  a  tumultuous 
pageantry ;  the  higher  instincts  of  her  nature  rose  and 
struggled  to  burst  the  bonds  in  which  slavery  and  igno- 
rance and  brutish  toil  had  bound  them  ;  she  knew  nothing, 
knew  no  more  than  the  grass  knew  that  blew  in  the  wind, 
than  the  passion-flower  knew  that  slept  unborn  in  the 
uncurled  leaf;  and  yet  withal  she  felt,  saw,  trembled, 
imagined,  and  desired,  all  mutely,  all  blindly,  all  in  con- 
fusion and  in  pain. 

The  weakness  of  tears  rushed  into  her  fearless  eyes, 
that  had  never  quailed  before  the  fury  of  any  living 
thing;  her  head  fell  on  her  chest;  she  wept  bitterly, — 
not  because  the  people  had  injured  her,  —  not  because 
her  wounded  flesh  ached  and  her  limbs  were  sore,  — 
but  because  a  distance  so  immeasurable,  so  unalterable, 
severed  her  from  all  of  which  these  gods  told  her  without 
speech. 

The  sunrays  still  shone  on  the  three  brethren,  whilst 
the  stones  on  which  she  sat  and  her  own  form  were  dark 
in  shadow  ;  and  as  though  the  bright  boy  Hypnos  pitied 
her,  as  though  he,  the  world's  consoler,  had  compassion 
for  this  thing  so  lonely  and  accursed  of  her  kind,  the  dumb 

22* 


258  FOLLE-FARINE. 

violence  of  her  weeping  brought  its  own  exhaustion 
with  it. 

The  drowsy  heat  of  noon,  pain,  weariness,  the  faintness 
of  fasting,  the  fatigue  of  conflict,  the  dreamy  influences 
of  the  place,  had  their  weight  on  her.  Crouching  there 
half  on  her  knees,  looking  up  ever  in  the  faces  of  the 
three  Immortals,  the  gift  of  Hypnos  descended  upon  her 
and  stilled  her ;  its  languor  stole  through  her  veins  ;  its 
gentle  pressure  closed  her  eyelids;  gradually  her  rigid 
limbs  and  her  bent  body  relaxed  and  unnerved  ;  she  sank 
forward,  her  head  lying  on  her  outstretched  arms,  and 
the  stillness  of  a  profound  sleep  encompassed  her. 

Oneiros  added  his  gift  also;  and  a  throng  of  dim,  de- 
lirious dreams  floated  through  her  brain,  and  peopled  her 
slumber  with  fairer  things  than  the  earth  holds,  and  made 
her  mouth  smile  while  yet  her  lids  were  wet. 

Thanatos  alone  gave  nothing,  but  looked  down  on  her 
with  his  dark  sad  eyes,  and  held  his  finger  on  his  close- 
pressed  lips,  as  though  he  said — **  Not  yet." 


CHAPTER   III. 


Her  sleep  remained  unbroken  ;  there  was  no  sound  to 
disturb  it.  The  caw  of  a  rook  in  the  top  of  the  poplar- 
tree,  the  rushing  babble  of  the  water,  the  cry  of  a  field- 
mouse  caught  among  the  rushes  by  an  otter,  the  far-off 
jingle  of  mules'  bells  from  the  great  southern  road  that 
ran  broad  and  white  beyond  the  meadows,  the  gnawing 
of  the  rats  in  the  network  of  timbers  which  formed  the 
vaulted  roof,  these  were  all  the  noises  that  reached  this 
solitary  place,  and  these  were  both  too  faint  and  too 
familiar  to  awaken  her.  Heat  and  pain  made  her  slum- 
ber heavy,  and  the  forms  on  which  her  waking  eyes  had 
gazed  made  her  sleep  full  of  dreams.  Hour  after  hour 
went  by ;  the  shadows  lengthened,  the  day  advanced : 
nothing  came  to  rouse  her.     At  length  the  vesper  bell 


FOLLE-FARINE.  259 

rang  over  the  pastures  and  the  peals  of  the  Ave  Maria 
from  the  cathedral  in  the  town  were  audible  in  the  intense 
stillness  that  reigned  around. 

As  the  chimes  died,  Arslan  crossed  the  threshold  of 
the  granary  and  entered  the  desolate  place  where  he  had 
made  his  home.  For  once  his  labor  had  been  early  com- 
pleted, and  he  had  hastened  to  employ  the  rare  and  pre- 
cious moments  of  the  remaining  light. 

He  had  almost  stepped  upon  her  ere  he  saw  her,  lying 
beneath  his  cartoons  of  the  sons  of  Nyx.  He  paused 
and  looked  down. 

Her  attitude  had  slightly  changed,  and  had  in  it  all  the 
abandonment  of  youth  and  of  sleep  ;  her  face  was  turned 
upward,  with  quick  silent  breathings  parting  the  lips ; 
her  bare  feet  were  lightly  crossed ;  the  linen  of  her  loose 
tunic  was  open  at  the  throajt,  and  had  fallen  back  from 
her  right  arm  and  shoulder  ;  the  whole  supple  grace  and 
force  that  were  mingled  in  her  form  were  visible  under 
the  light  folds  of  her  simple  garments.  The  sun  still 
lingered  on  the  bright  bowed  head  of  Hypnos,  but  all 
light  had  died  from  off  the  stone  floor  where  she  was 
stretched. 

As  she  had  once  looked  on  himself,  so  he  now  looked 
on  her. 

But  in  him  there  arose  little  curiosity  and  still  less 
pity ;  he  recognized  her  as  the  girl  whom,  with  a  face  of 
old  Egypt,  he  had  seen  rowing  her  boat-load  of  corn 
down  the  river,  and  whom  he  had  noticed  for  her  strange 
unlikeness  to  all  around  her. 

He  supposed  that  mere  curiosity  had  brought  her  there, 
and  sleep  overtaken  her  in  the  drowsiness  of  the  first 
heat  of  the  budding  year. 

He  did  not  seek  to  rouse  her,  nor  to  spare  her  any 
shame  or  pain  which,  at  her  waking,  she  might  feel.  He 
merely  saw  in  her  a  barbaric  yet  beautiful  creature  ;  and 
his  only  desire  was  to  use  the  strange  charms  in  her  for 
his  art. 

A  smooth-planed  panel  stood  on  an  easel  near ;  turn- 
ing it  where  best  the  light  fell,  he  began  to  sketch  her 
attitude,  rapidly,  in  black  and  white.  It  was  quickly 
done  by  a  hand  so  long  accustomed  to  make  such  tran- 


260  FOLLE-FARINE. 

scripts;  and  he  soon  went  further,  to  that  richer  por- 
traiture which  color  alone  can  accomplish.  The  gray 
stone  pavement ;  the  brown  and  slender  limbs ;  the 
breadth  of  scarlet  given  by  the  sash  about  her  loins ;  the 
upturned  face,  whose  bloom  was  as  brilliant  as  that  of  a 
red  carnation  blooming  in  the  twilight  of  some  old  wooden 
gallery;  the  eyelids,  tear-laden  still;  the  mouth'  that 
smiled  and  sighed  in  dreaming ;  while  on  the  wall  above, 
the  radiant  figure  of  the  young  god  remained  in  full  sun- 
light whilst  all  beneath  was  dark; — these  gave  a  picture 
which  required  no  correction  from  knowledge,  no  addi- 
tion from  art. 

He  worked  on  for  more  than  an  hour,  until  the  wood 
began  to  beam  with  something  of  the  hues  of  flesh  and 
blood,  and  the  whole  head  was  thrown  out  in  color,  al- 
though the  body  and  the  iimbs  still  remained  in  their 
mere  outline. 

Once  or  twice  she  moved  restlessly,  and  muttered  a 
little,  dully,  as  though  the  perpetual  unsparing  gaze,  bent 
on  her  with  a  scrutiny  so  cold  and  yet  so  searching,  dis- 
turbed or  magnetized  her  even  in  her  sleep.  But  she 
never  awakened,  and  he  had  time  to  study  and  to  trace 
out  every  curve  and  line  of  the  half-developed  loveliness 
before  him  with  as  little  pity,  with  as  cruel  exactitude,  as 
that  with  which  the  vivisector  tears  asunder  the  living 
animal  whose  sinews  he  severs,  or  the  botanist  plucks  to 
pieces  the  new-born  flower  whose  structure  he  desires  to 
examine. 

The  most  beautiful  women,  who  had  bared  their  charms 
that  he  might  see  them  live  again  upon  his  canvas,  had 
seldom  had  power  to  make  his  hand  tremble  a  moment  in 
such  translation. 

To  the  surgeon  all  sex  is  dead,  all  charm  is  gone,  from 
the  female  corpse  that  his  knife  ravages  in  search  of  the 
secrets  of  science ;  and  to  Arslan  the  women  whom  he 
modeled  and  portrayed  were  nearly  as  sexless,  nearly  as 
powerless  to  create  passion  or  emotion.  They  were  the 
tools  for  his  art:  no  more. 

When,  in  the  isolation  of  the  long  northern  winters,  he 
had  sat  beside  the  pine-wood  that  blazed  on  his  hearth 
while  the  wolves  howled  down  the  deserted  village  street, 


FOLLE-FARINE.  261 

and  the  snow  drifted  up  and  blocked  from  sight  the  last 
pane  of  the  lattice  and  the  last  glimpse  of  the  outer  world, 
he  had  been  more  enamored  of  the  visions  which  visited 
him  in  that  solitude  than  he  had  ever  been  since  of  the 
living  creatures  whose  beauty  he  had  recorded  in  his 
works. 

He  had  little  passion  in  him,  or  passion  was  dormant; 
and  he  had  sought  women,  even  in  the  hours  of  love,  with 
coldness  and  with  something  of  contempt  for  that  license 
which,  in  the  days  of  his  comparative  affluence,  he  had  not 
denied  himself.     He  thought  always — 

"De  ces  baisers  puissants  corarae  un  dictame, 
De  ces  transports  plus  vifs  que  des  rayons, 
•         Que  reste-t-il  ?     C'est  affreux,  6  mon  auie  ! 

Rien  qu'un  dessin  fort  pale  aux  trois  crayons." 

And  for  those  glowing  colors  of  passion  which  burned  so 
hotly  for  an  instant,  only  so  soon  to  fade  out  into  the 
pallor  of  indifference  or  satiety,  he  had  a  contempt  which 
almost  took  the  place  and  the  semblance  of  chastity. 

He  worked  on  and  on,  studying  the  sleeper  at  his  feet 
with  the  keenness  of  a  science  that  was  as  merciless  in 
its  way  as  the  science  which  tortures  and  slaughters  in 
order  to  penetrate  the  mysteries  of  sentient  existence. 

She  was  beautiful  in  her  way,  this  dark  strange  foreign 
child,  who  looked  as  though  her  native  home  must  have 
been  where  the  Nile  lily  blooms,  and  the  black  brows  of 
the  Sphinx  are  bent  against  the  sun. 

She  was  beautiful  like  a  young  leopard,  like  a  young 
python,  coiled  there,  lightly  breathing,  and  mute  and  mo- 
tionless and  unconscious.  He  painted  her  as  he  would 
have  painted  the  leopard  or  python  lying  asleep  in  the 
heavy  hush  of  a  noon  of  the  tropics.  And  she  was  no 
more  to  him  than  these  would  have  been. 

The  shadows  grew  longer ;  the  sunlight  died  off  the 
bright  head  of  the  boy  Hypnos ;  the  feathery  reeds  on 
the  bank  without  got  a  red  flush  from  the  west;  there 
came  a  sudden  burst  of  song  from  a  boat-load  of  children 
going  home  from  the  meadows  where  they  had  gathered 
the  first  cowslips  of  the  season  in  great  sheaves  that  sent 
their  sweetness  on  the  air  through  the  open  window  as 
they  went  by  beneath  the  walls. 


262  FOLLE-FARINE. 

The  shouts  of  the  joyous  singing  rang  shrilly  through 
the  silence  ;  they  pierced  her  ear  and  startled  her  from 
her  slumber;  she  sprang  up  suddenly,  with  a  bound  like 
a  hart  that  scents  the  hounds,  and  stood  fronting  him ; 
her  eyes  opened  wide,  her  breath  panting,  her  nerves 
strained  to  listen  and  striving  to  combat. 

For  in  the  first  bewildered  instant  of  her  awakening  she 
thought  that  she  was  still  in  the  market-place  of  the  town, 
and  that  the  shouts  were  from  the  clamor  of  her  late 
tormentors. 

He  turned  and  looked  at  her. 

"What  do  you  fear?"  he  asked  her,  in  the  tongue  of 
the  country. 

She  started  afresh  at  the  sound  of  his  voice,  and  drew 
her  disordered  dress  together,  and  stood  mute,  with  her 
hands  crossed  on  her  bosom,  and  the  blood  coming  and 
going  under  her  transparent  skin. 

"  What  do  you  fear  V1  he  asked  again. 

"/fear?" 

She  echoed  the  cowardly  word  with  a  half-tremulous 
defiance;  the  heroism  of  her  nature,  which  an  hour  earlier 
had  been  lashed  to  its  fullest  strength,  cast  back  the 
question  as  an  insult;  but  her  voice  was  low  and  husky, 
and  the  blood  dyed  her  face  scarlet  as  she  spoke. 

For  she  feared  him ;  and  for  the  moment  she  had  for- 
gotten how  she  had  come  there  and  all  that  had  passed, 
except  that  some  instinct  of  the  long-hunted  animal  was 
astir  in  her  to  hide  herself  and  fly. 

But  he  stood  between  her  and  the  passage  outward, 
and  pride  and  shame  held  her  motionless.  Moreover, 
she  still  listened  intently :  the  confused  voices  of  the 
children  still  seemed  to  her  like  those  of  the  multitude  by 
whom  she  had  been  chased ;  and  she  was  ready  to  leap 
tiger-like  upon  them,  rather  than  let  them  degrade  her  in 
his  sight. 

He  looked  at  her  with  some  touch  of  interest :  she  was 
to  him  only  some  stray  beggar-girl,  who  had  trespassed 
into  his  solitude ;  yet  her  untamed  regard,  her  wide- 
open  eyes,  the  staglike  grace  of  her  attitude,  the  sullen 
strength  which  spoke  in  her  reply, — all  attracted  him 
to  closer  notice  of  these. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  263 

"  Why  are  you  in  this  place  ?"  he  asked  her,  slowly. 
"  You  were  asleep  here  when  I  came,  more  than  an  hour 
ago." 

The  color  burned  in  her  face  :  she  said  nothing. 

The  singing  of  the  children  was  waxing  fainter,  as  the 
boat  floated  from  beneath  the  wall  on  its  homeward  way 
into  the  town.  She  ceased  to  fancy  these  cries  the  cries 
of  her  foes,  and  recollection  began  to  revive  in  her. 

"  Why  did  you  come  F"  he  repeated,  musing  how  he 
should  persuade  her  to  return  to  the  attitude  sketched  out 
upon  his  easel. 

She  returned  his  look  with  the  bold  truthfulness  natural 
to  her,  joined  with  the  apprehensiveness  of  chastisement 
which  becomes  second  nature  to  every  creature  that  is 
forever  censured,  cursed,  and  beaten  for  every  real  or 
imagined  fault. 

"I  came  to  see  thone"  she  answered  him,  with  a  back- 
ward movement  of  her  hand,  which  had  a  sort  of  rever- 
ence in  it,  up  to  the  forms  of  the  gods  above  her. 

The  answer  moved  him  ;  he  had  not  thought  to  find  a 
feeling  so  high  as  this  in  this  ragged,  lonely,  sunburnt 
child;  and,  to  the  man  for  whom,  throughout  a  youth  of 
ambition  and  of  disappointment,  the  world  had  never 
found  the  voice  of  favor,  even  so  much  appreciation  as  lay 
in  this  outcast's  homage  had  its  certain  sweetness.  For 
a  man  may  be  negligent  of  all  sympathy  for  himself,  yet 
never,  if  he  be  poet  or  artist,  will  he  be  able  utterly  to 
teach  himself  indifference  to  all  sympathy  for  his  works. 

"Those!"  he  echoed,  in  surprise.  "  What  can  they 
be  to  you  V 

She  colored  at  the  unconcealed  contempt  that  lay  in 
his  last  word  ;  her  head  drooped ;  she  knew  that  they 
were  much  to  her — friends,  masters,  teachers  divine  and 
full  of  pity.  But  she  had  no  language  in  which  to  tell 
him  this;  and  if  she  could  have  told  him,  she  would  have 
been  ashamed.  Also,  the  remembrance  of  those  benefits 
to  him,  of  which  he  was  ignorant,  had  now  come  to  her 
through  the  bewilderment  of  her  thoughts,  and  it  locked 
her  lips  to  silence. 

Her  eyes  dropped  under  his ;  the  strange  love  she  bore 
him  made  her  blind  and  giddy  and  afraid ;  she  moved 


2G4  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

restlessly,  glaring  round  with  the  half-timid,  half-fierce 
glances  of  a  wild  animal  that  desires  to  escape  and 
cannot. 

Watching  her  more  closely,  he  noticed  for  the  first  time 
the  stains  of  blood  upon  her  shoulder,  and  the  bruise  on 
her  chest,  where  the  rent  in  her  linen  left  it  bare. 

"You  have  been  hurt  ?"  he  asked  her,  "  or  wounded  ?" 

She  shook  her  head. 

"  It  is  nothing." 

"  Nothing  ?  You  have  fallen  or  been  ill  treated, 
surely  ?" 

"  The  people  struck  me." 

"  Struck  you  ?     With  what  ?" 

"  Stones." 

"And  whv?" 

"  I  am  Folle-Farine." 

She  answered  him  with  the  quiet  calm  of  one  who 
offers  an  all-sufficient  reply. 

But  the  reply  to  him  told  nothing:  be  had  been  too 
shunned  by  the  populace,  who  dreaded  the  evil  genius 
which  they  attributed  to  him,  to  have  been  told  by  them 
of  their  fancies  and  their  follies ;  and  he  had  never  es- 
sayed to  engage  either  their  companionship  or  their  con- 
fidence. To  be  left  to  work,  or  to  die,  in  solitude  undis- 
turbed was  the  uttermost  that  he  had  ever  asked  of  any 
strange  people  amidst  whom  he  had  dwelt. 

"Because  you  are  Folle-Farine?"  he  repeated.  "Is 
that  a  reason  to  hate  you  ?" 

She  gave  a  gesture  of  assent. 

"  And  you  hate  them  in  return  ?" 

She  paused  a  moment,  glancing  still  hither  and  thither 
all  round,  as  a  trapped  bird  glances,  seeking  his  way 
outward. 

11 1  think  so,"  she  muttered  ;  "  and  yet  I  have  had 
their  little  children  in  my  reach  many  a  time  by  the 
water  when  the  woods  were  all  quiet,  and  I  have  never 
killed  one  yet." 

He  looked  at  her  more  earnestly  than  he  had  done  be- 
fore. The  repressed  passion  that  glanced  under  her 
straight  dusky  brows,  the  unspoken  scorn  which  curled 
on  her  mouth,  the  nervous  meaning  with  which  her  hands 


FOLLE-FARINE.  265 

clinched  on  the  folds  of  linen  on  her  breast,  attracted 
him ;  there  was  a  force  in  them  all  which  aroused  his 
attention.  There  were  in  her  that  conscious  power  for 
ferocity,  and  that  contemptuous  abstinence  from  its  exer- 
cise, which  lie  so  often  in  the  fathomless  regard  of  the 
lion  ;  he  moved  nearer  to  her,  and  addressed  her  more 
gently. 

"  Who  are  you  ?"  he  asked,  "  and  why  have  these 
people  such  savage  violence  against  you  ?" 

u  I  am  Folle-Farine,"  she  answered  him  again,  unable 
to  add  anything  else. 

"  Have  you  no  other  name  ?" 

"No." 

"  But  you  must  have  a  home  ?     You  live — where  ?" 

"  At  the  mill  with  Flamma." 

"  Does  he  also  ill  use  you  ?" 

"  He  beats  me." 

"  When  you  do  wrong?" 

She  was  silent^ 

"Wrong?"  "Right?" 

They  were  but  words  to  her — empty  and  meaningless. 
She  knew  that  he  beat  her  more  often  because  she  told 
truth  or  refused  to  cheat.  For  aught  that  she  was  sure 
of,  she  might  be  wrong,  and  he  right. 

Arslan  looked  at  her  musingly.  All  the  thought  he 
had  was  to  induce  her  to  return  to  the  attitude  necessary 
to  the  completion  of  his  picture. 

He  put  a  few  more  questions  to  her ;  but  the  replies 
told  him  little.  At  all  times  silent,  before  him  a  thou- 
sand emotions  held  her  dumb.  She  was  afraid,  besides, 
that  at  every  word  he  might  suspect  the  debt  he  owed 
to  hex*,  and  she  dreaded  its  avowal  with  as  passionate  a 
fear  as  though,  in  lieu  of  the  highest  sacrifice  and  service, 
her  action  had  been  some  crime  against  him.  She  felt 
ashamed  of  it,  as  of  some  unholy  thing:  it  seemed  to  her 
impious  to  have  dared  to  give  him  back  a  life  that  he  had 
wearied  of,  and  might  have  wished  to  lose. 

"  He  must  never  know,  he  must  never  know,"  she 
said  to  herself. 

She  had  never  known  what  fear  meant  until  she  had 
looked  on  this  man's  face.     Now  she  dreaded,  with  an 

23 


266  FOLLE-FARINE. 

intensity  of  apprehension,  which  made  her  start  like  a 
criminal  at  every  sound,  lest  he  should  ever  know  of  this 
gift  of  life  which,  unbidden,  she  had  restored  to  him:  this 
gift,  which  being  thus  given,  her  instinct  told  her  he 
would  only  take  as  a  burden  of  an  intolerable  debt  of  an 
unmeasurable  shame. 

"  Perfect  love  casts  out  fear,"  runs  the  tradition  :  rather, 
surely,  does  the  perfect  love  of  a  woman  break  the  courage 
which  no  other  thing  could  ever  daunt,  and  set  foot  on 
the  neck  that  no  other  yoke  would  ever  touch. 

By  slow  degrees  he  got  from  her  such  fragments  of  her 
obscure  story  as  she  knew.  That  this  child,  so  friend- 
less, ill  treated,  and  abandoned,  had  been  the  savior  of 
his  own  existence,  he  never  dreamed.  A  creature  beaten 
and  half  starved  herself  could  not,  for  an  instant,  seem  to 
him  one  likely  to  have  possessed  even  such  humble  gifts 
as  food  and  fuel.  Besides,  his  thoughts  were  less  with 
her  than  with  the  interrupted  study  on  his  easel,  and  his 
one  desire  was  to  induce  her  to  endui^  the  same  watch 
upon  her,  awakening,  which  had  had  power  to  disturb  her 
even  in  her  unconsciousness.  She  was  nothing  to  him, 
save  a  thing  that  he  wished  to  turn  to  the  purpose  of  his 
art — like  a  flower  that  he  plucked  on  his  way  through  the 
fields,  for  the  sake  of  its  color,  to  fill  in  some  vacant  nook 
in  a  mountain  foreground. 

"  You  have  come  often  here  ?"  he  asked  her,  whilst  she 
stood  before  him,  flushing  and  growing  pale,  irresolute 
and  embarrassed,  with  her  hands  nervously  gathering  the 
folds  of  her  dress  across  her  chest,  and  her  sad,  lustrous, 
troubled  eyes  glancing  from  side  to  side  in  a  bewildered 
fear. 

"  Often,"  she  muttered.  "  You  will  not  beat  me  for  it  ? 
I  did  no  harm." 

"  Beat  you  ?  Among  what  brutes  have  you  lived  ? 
Tell  me,  why  did  you  care  to  come  ?" 

Her  face  drooped,  and  grew  a  deeper  scarlet,  where  the 
warm  blood  was  burning. 

"  They  are  beautiful,  and  they  speak  to  me,"  she  mur- 
mured, with  a  pathetic,  apologetic  timidity  in  her  voice. 

He  laughed  a  little  ;  bitterly. 

"  Are  they  ?     They  have  few  auditors.     But  you  are 


FOLLE-FARTNE.  267 

beautiful,  too,  in  your  way.     Has  no  one  ever  told  you 
so?" 

She  glanced  at  him  half  wistfully,  half  despairingly; 
she  thought  that  he  spoke  in  derision  of  her. 

"  You,"  he  answered.  "  Why  not  ?  Look  at  yourself 
here:  all  imperfect  as  it  is,  you  can  see  something  of 
what  you  are." 

Her  eyes  fell  for  the  first  time  on  the  broad  confused 
waves  of  dull  color,  out  of  whose  depths  her  own  face 
arose,  like  some  fair  drowned  thing  tossed  upward  on  a 
murky  sea.  She  started  with  a  cry  as  if  he  had  wounded 
her,  and  stood  still,  trembling. 

She  had  looked  at  her  own  limbs  floating  in  the  opaque 
water  of  the  bathing  pool,  with  a  certain  sense  of  their 
beauty  wakening  in  her;  she  had  tossed  the  soft,  thick, 
gold-flecked  darkness  of  her  hair  over  her  bare  shoulder, 
with  a  certain  languor  and  delight ;  she  had  held  a  knot 
of  poppies  against  her  breast,  to  see  their  hues  contrast 
with  her  own  white  skin ; — but  she  had  never  imagined 
that  she  had  beauty. 

He  watched  her,  letting  the  vain  passion  he  thus 
taught  her  creep  with  all  its  poison  into  her  veins. 

He  had  seen  such  wonder  and  such  awed  delight  before 
in  Nubian  girls  with  limbs  of  bronze  and  eyes  of  night, 
who  had  never  thought  that  they  had  loveliness, — though 
they  had  seen  their  forms  in  the  clear  water  of  the  wells 
every  time  that  they  had  brought  their  pitchers  thither, 
— and  who  had  only  awakened  to  that  sweet  supreme 
sense  of  power  and  possession,  when  first  they  had  beheld 
themselves  live  again  upon  his  canvas. 

11  You  are  glad  ?"  he  asked  her  at  length. 

She  covered  her  face  with  her  hands. 

"  I  am  frightened  !" 

Frightened  she  knew-  not  why,  and  utterly  ashamed, 
to  have  lain  thus  in  his  sight,  to  have  slept  thus  under 
his  eyes;  and  yet  filled  with  an  ecstasy,  to  think  that 
she  was  lovely  enough  to  be  raised  amidst  those  mar- 
velous dreams  that  peopled  and  made  heaven  of  his 
solitude. 

11  Well,  then, — let  me  paint  you  there,"  he  said,  after  a 


268  FOLLE-FARINE. 

pause.  "  I  am  too  poor  to  offer  you  reward  for  it.  I  have 
nothing " 

M  I  want  nothing,"  she  interrupted  him,  quickly,  while 
a  dark  shadow,  half  wrath,  half  sorrow,  swept  across  her 
face. 

He  smiled  a  little. 

"  I  cannot  boast  the  same.  But,  since  you  care  for 
all  these  hapless  things  that  are  imprisoned  here,  do  me, 
their  painter,  this  one  grace.  Lie  there,  in  the  shadow 
again,  as  you  were  when  you  slept,  and  let  me  go  on 
with  this  study  of  you  till  the  sun  sets." 

A  glory  beamed  over  all  her  face.  Her  mouth  trem- 
bled, her  whole  frame  shook  like  a  reed  in  the  wind. 

"  If  you  care  1"  she  said,  brokenly,  and  paused.  It 
seemed  to  her  impossible  that  this  form  of  hers,  which 
had  been  only  deemed  fit  for  the  whip,  for  the  rope,  for 
the  shower  of  stones,  could  have  any  grace  or  excellence 
in  his  sight;  it  seemed  to  her  impossible  that  this  face 
of  hers,  which  nothing  had  ever  kissed  except  the  rough 
tongue  of  some  honest  dog,  and  which  had  been  blown 
on  by  every  storm-wind,  beaten  on-  by  every  summer 
sun,  could  have  color,  or  shape,  or  aspect  that  could  ever 
please  him! 

"  Certainly  I  care.  Go  yonder  and  lie  as  you  were 
lying  a  few  moments  ago — there  in  the  shadow,  under 
these  gods." 

She  was  used  to  give  obedience — the  dumb  unques- 
tioning obedience  of  the  packhorse  or  the  sheepdog,  and 
she  had  no  idea  for  an  instant  of  refusal.  It  was  a 
great  terror  to  her  to  hear  his  voice  and  feel  his  eyes 
on  her,  and  be  so  near  to  him  ;  yet  it  was  equally  a  joy 
sweeter  and  deeper  than  she  had  ever  dreamed  of  as 
possible.  He  still  seemed  to  her  like  a  god,  this  man 
under  whose  hand  flowers  bloomed,  and  sunrays  smiled, 
and  waters  flowed,  and  human  forms  arose,  and  the 
gracious  shapes  of  a  thousand  dreams  grew  into  sub- 
stance.    And  yet,  in  herself,  this  man  saw  beauty  1 

He  motioned  her  with  a  careless,  gentle  gesture,  as  a 
man  motions  a  timid  dog,  to  the  spot  over  which  the 
three  brethren  watched  hand  in  hand  ;  and  she  stretched 
herself  down  passively  and  hnmbly,  meekly  as  the  dog 


FOLLE-FARINE.  269 

stretches  himself  to  rest  at  his  master's  command.  Over 
all  her  body  the  blood  was  leaping  ;  her  limbs  shuddered  ; 
her  breath  came  and  went  in  broken  murmurs ;  her 
bright-hued  skin  grew  dark  and  white  by  turns ;  she  was 
filled  with  a  passionate  delight  that  he  had  found  any- 
thing in  her  to  desire  or  deem  fair ;  and  she  quivered 
with  a  tumultuous  fear  that  made  her  nervous  as  any 
panting  hare.  Her  heart  beat  as  it  had  never  done  when 
the  people  had  raged  in  their  fury  around  her.  One 
living  creature  had  found  beauty  in  her;  one  human 
voice  had  spoken  to  her  gently  and  without  a  curse  ; 
one  man  had  thought  her  a  thing  to  be  entreated  and 
not  scorned  ;• — a  change  so  marvelous  in  her  fate  trans- 
figured all  the  world  for  her,  as  though  the  gods  above 
bad  touched  her  lips  with  fire. 

But  she  was  mute  and  motionless  ;  the  habit  of  silence 
and  of  repression  had  become  her  second  nature ;  no 
statue  of  marble  could  have  been  stiller,  or  in  semblance 
more  lifeless,  than  she  was  where  she  rested  on  the  stones. 

Arslan  noticed  nothing  of  this ;  he  was  intent  upon 
his  work.  The  sun  was  very  near  its  setting,  and  every 
second  of  its  light  was  precious  to  him.  The  world  in- 
deed he  knew  would  in  all  likelihood  never  be  the  wiser 
or  the  richer  for  anything  he  did  ;  in  all  likelihood  he 
knew  all  these  things  that  he  created  were  destined  to 
moulder  away  undisturbed  save  by  the  rats  that  might 
gnaw,  and  the  newts  that  might  traverse,  them.  He 
was  buried  here  in  the  grave  of  a  hopeless  penury,  of  an 
endless  oblivion.  They  were  buried  with  him  ;  and  the 
world  wanted  neither  him  nor  them.  Still,  having  the 
madness  of  genius,  he  was  as  much  the  slave  of  his  art 
as  though  an  universal  fame  had  waited  his  lowliest  and 
lightest  effort. 

With  a  deep  breath  that  had  half  a  sigh  in  it  he  threw 
down  his  brushes  when  the  darkness  fell.  While  he 
wrought,  he  forgot  the  abject  bitterness  of  his  life  ;  when 
he  ceased  work,  he  remembered  how  hateful  a  thing  it  is 
to  live  when  life  means  only  deprivation,  obscurity,  and 
failure. 

He  thanked  her  with  a  Jew  words  of  gratitude  to  her 
for  her  patience,  and  released  her  from  the  strain  of  the 

23* 


270  FOLLE-FAMNE. 

attitude.  She  rose  slowly  with  an  odd  dazzled  look  upon 
her  face,  like  one  coming  out  of  great  darkness  into  the 
full  blaze  of  day.  Her  eyes  sought  the  portrait  of  her 
own  form,  which  was  still  hazy  and  unformed,  amidst  a 
mist  of  varying  hues :  that  she  should  be  elected  to  have 
a  part  with  those  glorious  things  which  were  the  com- 
panions of  his  loneliness  seemed  to  her  a  wonder  so 
strange  and  so  immeasurable  that  her  mind  still  could 
not  grasp  it. 

For  it  was  greatness  to  her:  a  greatness  absolute  and 
i'ik: edible.  The  men  had  stoned,  the  women  cursed,  the 
children  hooted  her  ;  but  he  selected  her — and  her  alone 
—for  that  supreme  honor  which  his  hand  could  give. 

Not  noticing  the  look  upon  her  face  he  placed  before 
her  on  the  rude  bench,  which  served  in  that  place  for  a 
table,  some  score  of  small  studies  in  color,  trifles  brilliant 
as  the  rainbow,  birds,  flowers,  insects,  a  leaf  of  fern,  an 
orchid  in  full  bloom,  a  nest  with  a  blue  warbler  in  it,  a 
few  peasants  by  a  wayside  cross,  a  child  at  a  well,  a 
mule  laden  with  autumn  fruit — anything  which  in  the 
district  had  caught  his  sight  or  stirred  his  fancy.  He 
bade  her  choose  from  them. 

"There  is  nothing  else  here,"  he  added.  "But  since 
you  care  for  such  things,  take  as  many  of  them  as  you 
will  as  recompense." 

Her  face  flushed  up  to  the  fringes  of  her  hair  ;  her  eyes 
looked  at  the  sketches  in  thirsty  longing.  Except  the 
scarlet  scarf  of  Marcellin,  this  was  the  only  gift  she  had 
ever  had  offered  her.  And  all  these  reproductions  of  the 
world  around  her  were  to  her  like  so  much  sorcery. 
Owning  one,  she  would  have  worshiped  it,  revered  it, 
caressed  it,  treasured  it ;  her  life  was  so  desolate  and 
barren  that  such  a  gift  seemed  to  her  as  handfuls  of  gold 
and  silver  would  seem  to  a  beggar  were  he  bidden  to 
take  them  and  be  rich. 

She  stretched  her  arms  out  in  one  quick  longing  ges- 
ture;  then  as  suddenly  withdrew  them,  folding  them  on 
her  chest,  whilst  her  face  grew  very  pale.  Something  of 
its  old  dark  proud  ferocity  gathered  on  it. 

"I  want  no  payment,"  she  said,  huskily,  and  she 
turned  to  the  threshold  and  cros'sed  it. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  2U 

He  stayed  her  with  his  hand. 

"  Wait.  I  did  not  mean  to  hurt  you.  Will  you  not 
take  them  as  reward  ?" 

-No." 

She  spoke  almost  sullenly ;  there  was  a  certain  sharp- 
ness and  dullness  of  disappointment  at  her  heart.  She 
wanted,  she  wished,  she  knew  not  what.  But  not  that 
he  should  offer  her  payment. 

"  Can  you  return  to-morrow  ?  or  any  other  day  ?"  he 
asked  her,  thinking  of  the  sketch  unfinished  on  the  sheet 
of  pinewood.  He  did  not  notice  the  beating  of  her  heart 
under  her  folded  arms,  the  quick  gasp  of  her  breath,  the 
change  of  the  rich  color  in  her  face. 

"If  you  wish,"  she  answered  him  below  her  breath. 

u  I  do  wish,  surely.  The  sketch  is  all  unfinished 
yet." 

"I  will  come,  then." 

She  moved  away  from  him  across  the  threshold  as  she 
spoke  ;  she  was  not  afraid  of  the  people,  but  she  was 
afraid  of  this  strange,  passionate  sweetness,  which 
seemed  to  fill  her  veins  with  fire  and  make  her  drunk 
and  blind. 

"  Shall  I  go  with  you  homeward?" 

She  shook  her  head. 

"  But  the  people  who  struck  you  ? — they  may  attack 
you  again?" 

She  laughed  a  little  ;  low  in  her  throat. 

"  I  showed  them  a  knife ! — they  are  timid  as  hares." 

"  You  are  always  by  yourself?" 

11  Always." 

She  drew  herself  with  a  rapid  movement  from  him  and 
sprang  into  her  boat  where  it  roekod  amidst  the  rushes 
against  the  steps ;  in  another  instant  she  had  thrust  it 
from  its  entanglement  in  the  reeds,  and  pulled  with  swift, 
steady  strokes  down  the  stream  into  the  falling  shadows 
of  the  night. 

"  You  will  come  back  ?"  he  called  to  her,  as  the  first 
stroke  parted  the  water. 

"Yes,"  she  answered  him  ;  and  the  boat  shot  forward 
into  the  shadow. 

Night  was  near  and  the  darkness  soon  inclosed  it ;  the 


272  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

beat  of  the  oars  sounding  faintly  through  the  silence  of 
the  evening. 

There  was  little  need  to  exact  the  promise  from  her. 

Like  Persephone  she  had  eaten  of  the  fatal  pome- 
granate-seed, which,  whether  she  would  or  no,  would 
make  her  leave  the  innocence  of  youth,  and  the  light  of 
the  sun  and  the  blossoms  of  the  glad  green  springtime 
world,  and  draw  her  footsteps  backward  and  downward 
to  that  hell  which  none, — once  having  entered  it, — can 
ever  more  forsake. 

She  drifted  away  from  him  into  the  shadows  of  even- 
ing as  they  died  from  the  shore  and  the  stream  into  the 
gloom  of  the  night. 

He  thought  no  more  of  pursuing  her  than  he  thought 
of  chasing  the  melted  shadows. 

Returning  to  his  chamber  he  looked  for  some  minutes 
at  the  panel  where  it  leaned  against  the  wall,  catching 
the  first  pallid  moon-gleam  of  the  night. 

"  If  she  should  not  come,  it  will  be  of  little  moment,'? 
he  thought.  "  I  have  nearly  enough  for  remembrance 
there." 

And  he  went  away  from  the  painting,  and  took  up 
charcoal  and  turned  to  those  anatomical  studies  whose 
severity  he  never  spared  himself,  and  for  whose  perfec- 
tion he  pursued  the  science  of  form  even  in  the  bodies 
of  the  dead. 

From  the  moment  that  his  hand  touched  the  stylus  he 
forgot  her ;  for  she  was  no  more  to  him  than  a  chance 
bird  that  he  might  have  taken  from  its  home  among  the 
ripe  red  autumn  foliage  and  caged  for  awhile  to  study  its 
grace  and  color,  its  longing  eye  and  drooping  wing ;  and 
then  tossed  up  into  the  air  again  when  he  had  done  with 
it  to  find  its  way  to  freedom,  or  to  fall  into  the  fowler's 
snare  ; — what  matter  which  ? 

The  boat  went  on  into  the  darkness  under  the  willow 
banks,  past  the  great  Calvary,  whose  lantern  was  just  lit 
and  glimmered  through  the  gloom. 

She  knew  by  heart  the  old  familiar  wray ;  and  the  water 
was  as  safe  to  her  as  the  broadest  and  straightest  road  at 
noonday. 

She  loved  it  best  thus  ;  dusky :  half  seen ;  muttering 


FOLLE-FARINE.  273 

on  through  the  silence ;  fall  of  the  shadows  of  the  clouds 
and  of  the  boughs;  black  as  a  fresh-dug  grave  where 
some  ruined  wall  leaned  over  it ;  broken  into  little  silvery 
gleams  where  it  caught  the  light  from  a  saint's  shrine  or 
a  smith's  forge. 

By  day  a  river  is  but  the  highway  of  men ;  it  is  but  a 
public  bridge  betwixt  the  country  and  the  town  ;  but  at 
night  it  grows  mystical,  silent,  solitary,  unreal,  with  the 
sound  of  the  sea  in  its  murmurings  and  the  peace  of  death 
in  its  calm;  at  night,  through  its  ceaseless  whisperings, 
there  always  seem  to  come  echoes  from  all  the  voices  of 
the  multitudes  of  the  ocean  whence  it  comes,  and  from  all 
the  voices  of  the  multitudes  of  the  city  whither  it  goes. 

It  was  quite  dark  when  she  reached  the  landing  steps  ; 
the  moon  was  just  rising  above  the  sharp  gables  of  the 
mill-house,  and  a  lantern  was  moving  up  and  down  be- 
hind the  budded  boughs  as  Claudis  Flamma  went  to  and 
fro  in  his  wood-yard. 

At  the  jar  of  the  boat  against  the  steps  he  peered 
through  the  branches,  and  greeted  her  with  a  malignant 
reprimand.  He  timed  her  services  to  the  minute;  and 
here  had  been  a  full  half  day  of  the  spring  weather  wasted, 
and  lost  to  him.  He  drove  her  indoors  with  sharp  railing 
and  loud  reproaches ;  not  waiting  for  an  answer,  but 
heaping  on  her  the  bitterest  terms  of  reviling  that  his 
tongue  could  gather. 

In  the  kitchen  a  little  low  burning  lamp  lit  dully  the 
poverty  and  dreariness  of  the  place,  and  shed  its  orange 
rays  on  the  ill-tempered,  puckered,  gloomy  face  of  the  old 
woman  Pitchou  sitting  at  her  spindle;  there  was  a 
curious  odor  of  sun-dried  herbs  and  smoke-dried  fish  that 
made  the  air  heavy  and  pungent;  the  great  chimney 
yawned  black  and  fireless  ;  a  starveling  cat  mewed  dolor- 
ously above  an  empty  platter ;  under  a  tawdry-colored 
print  of  the  Flight  into  Egypt,  there  hung  on  a  nail  three 
dead  blackbirds,  shot  as  they  sang  the  praises  of  the 
spring ;  on  a  dresser,  beside  a  little  white  basin  of  holy 
water,  there  lay  a  gray  rabbit,  dead  likewise,  with  limbs 
'  broken  and  bleeding  from  the  trap  in  which  it  had  writhed 
helpless  all  through  the  previous  night. 

The  penury,  dullness,  and  cruelty,  the  hardness,  and 


2U  FOLLE-FARINE. 

barrenness,  and  unloveliness  of  this  life  in  which  she 
abode,  had  never  struck  her  with  a  sense  so  sharp  as  that 
which  now  fell  on  her;  crossing  the  threshold  of  this 
dreary  place  after  the  shadows  of  the  night,  the  beauty 
of  the  gods,  the  voice  of  praise,  the  eyes  of  Arslan. 

She  came  into  the  room,  bringing  with  her  the  cool 
fragrance  of  damp  earth,  wet  leaves,  and  wild  flowers ; 
the  moisture  of  the  evening  was  on  her  clothes  and  hair ; 
her  bare  feet  sparkled  with  the  silvery  spray  of  dew  ;  her 
eyes  had  the  look  of  blindness  yet  of  luster  that  the  night 
air  lends;  and  on  her  face  there  was  a  mingling  of 
puzzled  pain  and  of  rapturous  dreaming  wonder,  which 
new  thought  and  fresh  feeling  had  brought  there  to  break 
up  its  rich  darkness  into  light. 

The  old  woman,  twirling  a  flaxen  thread  upon  her 
wheel,  looked  askance  at  her,  and  mumbled,  "  Like 
mother,  like  child."  The  old  man,  catching  up  the  lamp, 
held  it  against  her  face,  and  peered  at  her  under  his  gray 
bent  brows. 

"A  whole  day  wasted  !"  he  swore  for  the  twentieth 
time,  in  his  teeth.  "  Beast  1  What  hast  thou  to  say  for 
thyself?" 

The  old  dogged  ferocity  gathered  over  her  countenance, 
chasing  away  the  softened  perplexed  radiance  that  had 
been  newly  wakened  there. 

?•  I  say  nothing,"  she  answered. 

"  Nothing-!  nothing  !"  he  echoed  after  her.  "  Then  we 
will  find  a  way  to  make  thee  speak.  Nothing  !■ — when 
three  of  the  clock  should  have  seen  thee  back  hither  at 
latest,  and  five  hours  since  then  have  gone  by  without 
account.  You  have  spent  it  in  brawling  and  pleasure 
— in  shame  and  iniquity — in  vice  and  in  violence,  thou 
creature  of  sin!" 

"  Since  you  know,  why  ask?" 

She  spoke  with  steady  contemptuous  calm.  She  dis- 
dained to  seek  refuge  from  his  fury  by  pleading  the 
injuries  that  the  townsfolk  had  wrought  her ;  and  of  the 
house  by  the  river  she  would  not  have  spoken  though 
they  had  killed  her.  The  storm  of  his  words  raged  on 
uninterrupted. 

"Five  hours,  five  mortal  hours,  stolen  from  me,  your 


FOLLE-FARINE.  275 

lawful  work  left  undone  that  you  may  riot  in  some  secret 
abomination  that  you  dare  not  to  name.  Say,  where  you 
have  been,  what  you  have  done,  you  spawn  of  hell,  or  I 
will  wring  your  throat  as  I  wring  a  sparrow's  I" 

**  I  have  done  as  I  chose." 

She  looked  him  full  in  the  eyes  as  she  spoke,  with  the 
look  in  her  own  that  a  bull's  have  when  he  lowers  his 
head  to  the  charge  and  attack. 

"As  you  choose !  Oh-ho  1  You  would  speak  as 
queens  speak — you! — a  thing  less  than  'the  worm  and -the 
emmet.  As  you  choose — you  ! — who  have  not  a  rag  on 
your  back,  not  a  crust  of  rye  bread,  not  a  leaf  of  salad  to 
eat,  not  a  lock  of  hay  for  your  bed,  that  is  not  mine — 
mine — mine.  As  you  choose.  You! — you  thing  begotten 
in  infamy ;  you  slave ;  you  beggar ;  you  sloth  !  You 
are  nothing — nothing — less  than  the  blind  worm  that 
crawls  in  the  sand.  You  have  the  devil  that  bred  you  in 
you,  no  doubt ;  but  it  shall  go  hard  if  I  cannot  conquer 
him  when  I  bruise  your  body  and  break  your  will." 

As  he  spoke  he  seized,  to  strike,  her ;  in  his  hand  he 
already  gripped  an  oak  stick  that  he  had  brought  in  with 
him  from  his  timber-yard,  aud  he  raised  it  to  rain  blows 
on  her,  expecting  no  other  course  than  that  dumb,  passive, 
scornful  submission  with  which  she  had  hitherto  accepted 
whatsoever  he  had  chosen  to  do  against  her. 

But  the  creature,  silent  and  stirless,  who  before  had 
stood  to  receive  his  lashes  as  though  her  body  were  of 
bronze  or  wood,  that  felt  not,  was  changed.  A  leonine 
and  superb  animal  sprang  up  in  full  rebellion.  She  started 
out  of  his  grasp,  her  lithe  form  springing  from  his  seizure 
as  a  willow-bough  that  has  been  bent  to  earth  springs 
back,  released,  into  the  air. 

She  caught  the  staff  in  both  her  hands,  wrenched  it  by 
a  sudden  gesture  from  him,  and  flung  it  away  to  the 
farther  end  of  the  chamber ;  then  she  turned  on  him  as  a 
hart  turns  brought  to  bay. 

Her  supple  body  was  erect  like  a  young  pine  ;  her  eyes 
flashed  with  a  luster  he  had  never  seen  in  them ;  the 
breath  came  hard  and  fast  through  her  dilated  nostrils. 

"  Touch  me  again !"  she  cried  aloud,  while  her  voice 
rang  full  and  imperious  through  the  stillness.     "  Touch 


276  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

me  again  ;  and  by  the  heaven  and  hell  you  prate  of,  I 
will  kill  you!" 

So  sudden  was  the  revolt,  so  sure  the  menace,  that  the 
old  man  dropped  his  hands  and  stood  and  gazed  at  her 
aghast  and  staring;  not  recognizing  the  mute,  patient, 
doglike  thing  that  he  had  beaten  at  his  will,  in  this 
stern,  fearless,  splendid,  terrible  creature,  who  faced  him 
in  all  the  royalty  of  wrath,  in  all  the  passion  of  insur- 
rection. 

He  could  not  tell  what  had  altered  her,  what  had 
wrought  this  transformation,  what  had  changed  her  as  by 
sorcery  ;  he  could  not  tell  that  what  had  aroused  a  human 
soul  in  her  had  been  the  first  human  voice  that  she  had 
listened  to  in  love ;  he  could  not  tell  that  her  body  had 
grown  sacred  to  her  because  a  stranger  had  called  her 
beautiful,  and  that  her  life  for  the  first  time  had  acquired 
a  worth  and  dignity  in  her  sight  because  one  man  had 
deemed  it  fair. 

He  could  not  tell ;  he  could  only  see  that  for  the  first 
time  his  slave  had  learned  somewhere,  and  in  somewise, 
what  freedom  meant ;  and  had  escaped  him.  This  alone 
he  saw ;  and,  seeing  it,  was  startled  and  afraid. 

She  waited,  watching  him  some  moments,  with  cold 
eyes  of  disdain,  in  which  a  smouldering  fire  slept,  ready 
to  burst  into  an  all-devouring  flame. 

There  was  not  a  sound  in  the  place ;  the  woman  spin- 
ning stopped  her  wheel,  wondering  in  a  half-stupid,  sav- 
age fashion  ;  the  lean  cat  ceased  its  cries ;  there  was  only 
the  continual  swish  of  the  water  in  the  sluices  under  the 
wall  without,  and  the  dull  ticking  of  an  old  Black  Forest 
clock,  that  kept  a  fitful  measure  of  the  days  and  nights  in 
its  cracked  case  of  painted  wood,  high  up,  where  the 
thyme,  and  the  sage,  and  the  onions  hung  among  the 
twisted  rafters. 

Folle-Farine  stood  still,  her  left  hand  resting  on  her 
hip,  her  lips  curved  scornfully  and  close,  her  face  full  of 
passion,  which  she  kept  still  as  the  dead  birds  hanging 
on  the  wall ;  whilst  all  the  time  the  tawny  smoky  hues 
of  the  oil-lamp  were  wavering  with  an  odd  fantastic 
play  over  her  head  and  limbs. 

Before  this  night  she  had  always  taken  every  blow  and 


FOLLE-FARINE.  277 

stripe  patiently,  without  vengeance,  without  effort,  as  she 
saw  the  mule  and  the  dog,  the  horse  and  the  ox,  take 
theirs  in  their  pathetic  patience,  in  their  noble  fortitude. 
She  had  thought  that  such  were  her  daily  portion  as  much 
as  was  the  daily  bread  she  broke. 

But  now,  since  she  had  awakened  with  the  smile  of  the 
gods  upon  her,  now  she  felt  that  sooner  than  endure 
again  that  indignity,  that  outrage,  she  would  let  her 
tyrant  kill  her  in  his  hate,  if  so  he  chose,  and  cast  her 
body  to  the  mill-stream,  moaning  through  the  trees  be- 
neath the  moon  ;  the  water,  at  least,  would  bear  her  with 
it,  tranquil  and  undefiled,  beneath  the  old  gray  walls  and 
past  the  eyes  of  Arslan. 

There  was  that  in  her  look  which  struck  dumb  the 
mouth,  and  held  motionless  the  arm,  of  Clandis  Flamma. 

Caustic,  savage,  hard  as  his  own  ash  staff  though  he 
was,  he  was  for  the  moment  paralyzed  and  unmanned. 
Some  vague  sense  of  shame  stirred  heavily  in  him;  some 
vague  remembrance  passed  over  him,  that,  what  soever 
else  she  might  be,  she  had  been  once  borne  in  his  daugh- 
ter's bosom,  and  kissed  by  his  daughter's  lips,  and  sent 
to  him  by  a  dead  woman's  will,  with  a  dead  woman's 
wretchedness  and  loneliness  as  her  sole  birth-gifts. 

He  passed  his  hands  over  his  eyes  with  a  blinded  ges- 
ture, staring  hard  at  her  in  the  dusky  lamp-light. 

He  was  a  strong  and  bitter  old  man,  made  cruel  by  one 
great  agony,  and  groping  his  way  savagely  through  a 
dark,  hungry,  superstitious,  ignorant  life.  But  in  that 
moment  he  no  more  dared  to  touch  her  than  he  would 
have  dared  to  tear  down  the  leaden  Christ  from  off  its 
crucifix,  and  trample  it  under  foot,  and  spit  on  it. 

He  turned  away,  muttering  in  his  throat,  and  kicking 
the  cat  from  his  path,  while  he  struck  out  the  light  with 
his  staff. 

u  Get  to  thy  den,"  he  said,  with  a  curse.  "  We  are 
abed  too  late.     To-morrow  I  will  deal  with  thee." 

She  went  without  a  word  out  of  the  dark  kitchen  and 
up  the  ladder-like  stairs,  up  to  her  lair  in  the  roof.  She 
said  nothing ;  it  was  not  in  her  nature  to  threaten  twice, 
or  twice  protest;  but  in  her  heart  she  knew  that  neither 
the  next  day,  nor  any  other  day,  should  that  which  Ars- 

24 


2T8  FOLLE-FARINE. 

Ian  had  called  "  beauty,"  be  stripped  and  struck  whilst  life 
was  in  her  to  preserve  it  by  death  from  that  indignity. 

From  the  time  of  her  earliest  infancy,  she  had  been 
used  to  bare  her  shoulders  to  the  lash,  and  take  the 
stripes  as  food  and  wages ;  she  had  no  more  thought  to 
resist  them  than  the  brave  hound,  who  fears  no  foe  on 
earth,  has  to  resist  his  master's  blows ;  the  dull  habits  of 
a  soulless  bondage  had  been  too  strong  on  her  to  be 
lightly  broken,  and  the  resignation  of  the  loyal  leasts 
that  were  her  comrades,  had  been  the  one  virtue  that  she 
had  seen  to  follow. 

But  now  at  length  she  had  burst  her  bonds,  and  had 
claimed  her  freedom. 

She  had  tasted  the  freshness  of  liberty,  and  the  blood 
burned  like  fire  in  her  face  as  she  remembered  the  patience 
and  the  shame  of  the  years  of  her  slavery. 

There  was  no  mirror  in  her  little  room  in  the  gabled 
eaves ;  all  the  mirror  she  had  ever  known  had  been  that 
which  she  had  shared  with  the  water-lilies,  when  to- 
gether she  and  they  had  leaned  over  the  smooth  dark 
surface  of  the  mill-pond.  But  the  moon  streamed  clearly 
through  the  one  unshuttered  window,  a  moon  full  and 
clear,  and  still  cold  ;  the  springtide  moon,  from  which 
the  pale  primroses  borrow  those  tender  hues  of  theirs, 
which  never  warm  or  grow  deeper,  however  golden  be 
the  sun  that  may  shine. 

Its  clear  colorless  crescent  went  sailing  past  the  little 
square  lattice  hole  in  the  wall ;  masses  of  gorgeous  cloud, 
white  and  black,  swept  by  in  a  fresh  west  wind ;  the 
fresh  breath  of  a  spring  night  chased  away  the  heat  and 
languor  of  the  day  ;  the  smell  of  all  the  blossoms  of  the 
spring  rose  up  from  wood  and  orchard ;  the  cool,  drowsy 
murmuring  of  the  mill-stream  beneath  was  the  only 
sound  on  the  stillness,  except  when  now  and  then  there 
came  the  wild  cry  of  a  mating  owl. 

The  moonbeams  fell  about  her  where  she  stood ;  and 
she  looked  down  on  her  smooth  skin,  her  glistening 
shoulders,  her  lustrous  and  abundant  hair,  on  which  the 
wavering  light  played  and  undulated.  The  most  deli- 
cious gladness  that  a  woman's  life  can  know  was  in 
tumult  iu  her,  conflicting  with  the  new  and  deadly  sense 


FOLLE-FARINE.  279 

of  shame  and  ignorance.  She  learned  that  she  was 
beautiful,  at  the  same  time  that  she  awoke  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  her  dumb,  lifeless  slavish  inferiority  to  all  other 
human   things. 

"  Beautiful !"  she  muttered  to  herself,  "  only  as  a 
poppy,  as  a  snake,  as  a  night-moth  are  beautiful — beau- 
tiful and  without  fragrance,  or  sweetness,  or  worth !" 

And  her  heart  was  heavy,  even  amidst  all  its  pleasure 
and  triumph,  heavy  with  a  sense  of  utter  ignorance  and 
utter  worthlessness. 

The  poppy  was  snapped  asunder  as  a  weed,  the  snake 
was  shunned  and  cursed  for  his  poison,  the  night-moth 
was  killed  because  his  nature  had  made  him  dwell  in  the 
darkness;  none  of  the  three  might  have  any  fault  in 
truth  in  them;  all  of  the  three  might  have  only  the  livery 
of  evil,  and  no  more  ;  might  be  innocent,  and  ask  only 
to  breathe  and  live  for  a  little  brief  space  in  their  world, 
which  men  called  God's  world.  Yet  were  they  con- 
demned by  men,  and  slain,  being  what  they  were,  al- 
though God  made  them. 

Even  so  she  felt,  without  reasoning,  had  it  been  and 
would  it  be,  with  herself. 


CHAPTER    IV. 


In  the  room  below,  the  old  Norman  woman,  who  did 
not  fear  her  taskmaster,  unbarred  the  shutter  to  let  the 
moon  shine  in  the  room,  and  by  its  light  put  away  her 
wheel  and  work,  and  cut  a  halved  lettuce  up  upon  a 
platter,  with  some  dry  bread,  and  ate  them  for  her 
supper. 

The  old  man  knelt  down  before  the  leaden  image,  and 
joined  his  knotted  hands,  and  p/ayed  in  a  low,  fierce, 
eager  voice,  while  the  heavy  pendulum  of  the  clock 
swung  wearily  to  and  fro. 

The  clock  kept  fitful  and  uncertain  time  ;  it  had  been 
so  long  imprisoned  in  the  gloom  there  among  the  beams 
and  cobwebs,  and  in  this  place  life  was  so  dull,  so  color- 


280  FOLLE-FARINE. 

less,  so  torpid,  that  it  seemed  to  have  forgotten  how 
time  truly  went,  and  to  wake  up  now  and  then  with  a 
shudder  of  remembrance,  in  which  its  works  ran  madly 
down. 

The  old  woman  ended  her  supper,  munching  the 
lettuce-leaves  thirstily  in  her  toothless  mouth,  and  not 
casting  so  much  as  a  crumb  of  the  crusts  to  the  cat,  who 
pitifully  watched,  and  mutely  implored,  with  great  raven- 
ous amber-circled  eyes.  Then  she  took  her  stick  and 
crept  out  of  the  kitchen,  her  wooden  shoes  clacking  loud 
on  the  bare  red  bricks. 

"  Prayer  did  little  to  keep  holy  the  other  one,"  she  mut- 
tered.     "  Unless,  indeed,  the  devil  heard  and  answered." 

But  Claudis  Flamma  for  all  that  prayed  on,  entreat- 
ing the  mercy  and  guidance  of  Heaven,  whilst  the  gore 
dripped  from  the  dead  rabbit,  and  the  silent  song-birds 
hung  stiff  upon  the  nail. 

"  Thou  hast  a  good  laborer,"  said  the  old  woman 
Pitehou,  witji  curt  significance,  to  her  master,  meeting 
him  in  the  raw  of  the  dawn  of  the  morrow,  as  he  drew 
the  bolts  from  his  house-door.  "  Take  heed  that  thou 
dost  not  drive  her  away,  Flamma.  One  may  beat  a  sad- 
dled mule  safely,  but  hardly  so  a  wolf's  cub." 

She  passed  out  of  the  door  as  she  spoke  with  mop  and 
pail  to  wash  down  the  paved  court  outside  ;  but  her  words 
abode  with  her  master. 

He  meddled  no  more  with  the  wolf's  cub. 

When  Folle-Farine  came  down  the  stairs  in  the  crisp, 
cool,  sweet-smelling  spring  morning  that  was  breaking 
through  the  mists  over  the  land  and  water,  he  motioned 
to  her  to  break  her  fast  with  the  cold  porridge  left  from 
overnight,  and  looking  at  her  from  under  his  bent  brows 
with  a  glance  that  had  some  apprehension  underneath  its 
anger,  apportioned  her  a  task  for  the  early  day  with  a  few 
bitter  words  of  command  ;  but  he  molested  her  no  further, 
nor  referred  ever  so  faintly  to  the  scene  of  the  past  night. 

She  ate  her  poor  and  tasteless  meal  in  silence,  and  set 
about  her  appointed  labor  without  protest.  So  long  as 
she  should  eat  his  bread,  so  long  she  said  to  herself  would 
she  serve  him.  Thus  much  the  pride  and  honesty  of  her 
nature  taught  her  was  his  due. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  281 

He  watched  her  furtively  under  his  shaggy  eyebrows. 
His  instinct  told  him  that  this  nameless,  dumb,  captive, 
desert  animal,  which  he  had  bound  as  a  beast  of  burden  to 
his  mill-wheels,  had  in  some  manner  learned  her  strength, 
and  would  not  long  remain  content  to  be  thus  yoked  and 
driven.  He  had  blinded  her  with  the  blindness  of  igno- 
rance, and  goaded  her  with  the  goad  of  ignominy ;  but 
for  all  that,  some  way  her  bandaged  eyes  had  sought  and 
found  the  light,  some  way  her  numbed  hide  had  thrilled 
and  swerved  beneath  the  barb. 

"  She  also  is  a  saint;  let  God  take  her  !"  said  the  old 
man  to  himself  in  savage  irony,  as  he  toiled  among  his 
mill-gear  and  his  sacks. 

His  heart  was  ever  sore  and  in  agony  because  his  God 
had  cheated  him,  letting  him  hold  as  purest  and  holiest 
among  women  the  daughter  who  had  betrayed  him.  In 
his  way  he  prayed  still ;  but  chiefly  his  prayer  was  a 
passionate  upbraiding,  a  cynical  reproach.  She — his  be- 
loved, his  marvel,  his  choicest  of  maidens,  his  fairest  and 
coldest  of  virgins — had  escaped  him  and  duped  him,  and 
been  a  thing  of  passion  and  of  foulness,  of  treachery  and 
of  lust,  all  the  while  that  he  had  worshiped  her.  There- 
fore he  hated  every  breathing  thing ;  therefore  he  slew  the 
birds  in  their  song,  the  insects  in  their  summer  bravery, 
the  lamb  in  its  gambols,  the  rabbit  in  its  play  amidst  the 
primroses.  Therefore  he  cried  to  the  God  whom  he  still 
believed  in,  "  Thou  lettest  that  which  was  pure  escape 
me  to  be  defiled  and  be  slaughtered,  and  now  Thou  lettest 
that  which  is  vile  escape  me  to  become  beautiful  and  free 
and  strong  I"  And  now  and  then,  in  this  woe  of  his 
which  was  so  pitiful  and  yet  so  brutal,  he  glanced  at  her 
where  she  labored  among  the  unbudded  vines  and  leafless 
fruit  trees,  and  whetted  a  sickle  on  the  whirling  grindstone, 
and  felt  its  edge,  and  thought  to  himself,  "  She  was  devil- 
begotten.  Would  it  not  be  well  once  and  for  all  to  rid  men 
of  her  f"  For,  he  reasoned,  being  thus  conceived  in  infamy 
and  branded  from  her  birth  upward,  how  should  she  be 
ever  otherwise  than  to  men  a  curse  ? 

Where  she  went  at  her  labors,  to  and  fro  among  the 
bushes  and  by  the  glancing  water,  she  saw  the  steel  hook 
and  caught  his  sideway  gaze,  and  read  his  meditation. 

24* 


282  FOLLE-FARINE. 

She  laughed,  and  did  not  fear.  Only  she  thought, 
"  He  shall  not  do  it  till  I  have  been  back  there." 

Before  the  day  was  done,  thither  she  went. 

He  had  kept  her  close  since  the  sunrise. 

Not  sending  her  out  on  any  of  the  errands  to  and  fro  the 
country,  which  had  a  certain  pleasure  to  her,  because  she 
gained  by  them  liberty  and  air,  and  the  contentment  of 
swift  movement  against  fresh  blowing  winds.  Nor  did 
he  send  her  to  the  town.  He  employed  her  through  ten 
whole  hours  in  outdoor  garden  labor,  and  in  fetching  and 
carrying  from  his  yard  to  his  lofts,  always  within  sight 
of  his  own  quick  eye,  and  within  call  of  his  harsh  voice. 

She  did  not  revolt.  She  did  what  he  bade  her  do 
swiftly  and  well.  There  was  no  fault  to  find  in  any  of 
her  labors. 

When  the  last  sack  was  carried,  the  last  sod  turned, 
the  last  burden  borne,  the  sun  was  sinking,  he  bade  her 
roughly  go  indoors  and  winnow  last  year's  wheat  in  the 
store  chambers  till  he  should  bid  her  cease. 

She  came  and  stood  before  him,  lier  eyes  very  quiet  in 
their  look  of  patient  strength. 

"  I  have  worked-  from  daybreak  through  to  sunset," 
she  said,  slowly,  to  him.  "  It  is  enough  for  man  and 
beast.     The  rest  I  claim." 

Before  he  could  reply  she  had  leaped  the  low  stone 
wall  that  parted  the  timber-yard  from  the  orchard,  and 
was  out  of  sight,  flying  far  and  fast  through  the  twilight 
of  the  boughs. 

He  muttered  a  curse,  and  let  her  go.  His  head  drooped 
on  his  breast,  his  hands  worked  restlessly  on  the  stone 
coping  of  the  wall,  his  withered  lips  muttered  in  wrath. 

"There  is  hell  in  her,"  he  said  to  himself.  "Let  her 
go  to  her  rightful  home.     There  is  one  thing " 

14  There  is  one  thing  ?"  echoed  the  old  woman,  hanging 
washed  linen  out  to  dry  on  the  boughs  of  the  half-bloomed 
almond- shrubs. 

He  gave  a  dreary,  greedy,  miser's  chuckle : 

11  One  thing; — I  have  made  the  devil  work  for  me  hard 
and  well  ten  whole  years  through  1" 

"  The  devil !"  mumbled  the  woman  Pitchou,  in  con- 
temptuous iteration.      "  Dost  think   the  devil  was  ever 


FOLLE-FARINE.  283 

such  a  fool  as  to  work  for  thy  wage  of  blows  and  of  black 
bread  ?  Why,  he  rules  the  world,  they  say !  And  how 
should  he  rule  unless  he  paid  his  people  well  V 

Folle-Farine  fled  on,  through  the  calm  woodlands, 
through  the  pastures  where  the  leek  herds  dreamed  theii 
days  away,  through  the  young  wheat  and  the  springing 
colza,  and  the  little  fields  all  bright  with  promise  of  the 
spring,  and  all  the  sunset's  wealth  of  golden  light. 

The  league  was  but  as  a  step  to  her,  trained  as  her 
muscles  were  to  speed  and  strength  until  her  feet  were 
as  fleet  as  are  the  doe's.  When  she  had  gained  her  goal 
then  only  she  paused,  stricken  with  a  sudden  shyness 
and  terror  of  what  she  hardly  knew. 

An  instinct,  rather  than  a  thought,  turned  her  towards 
a  little  grass-hidden  pool  behind  the  granary,  whose 
water  never  stirred,  save  by  a  pigeon's  rosy  foot,  or  by 
a  timid  plover's  beak,  was  motionless  and  clear  as  any 
mirror. 

Instinct,  rather  than  thought,  bent  her  head  over  it, 
and  taught  her  eyes  to  seek  her  own  reflection.  It  had 
a  certain  wonder  in  it  to  her  now  that  fascinated  her  with 
a  curious  indefinable  attraction.  For  the  first  time  in  her 
life  she  had  thought  of  it,  and  done  such  slight  things  as  she 
could  to  make  it  greater.  They  were  but  few, — linen 
a  little  whiter  and  less  coarse — the  dust  shaken  from  her 
scarlet  sash ;  her  bronze-hued  hail  burnished  to  richer  dark- 
ness ;  a  knot  of  wild  narcissi  in  her  bosom  gathered  with 
the  dew  on  them  as  she  came  through  the  wood. 

This  was  all;  yet  this  was  something;  something 
that  showed  the  dawn  -of  human  impulses,  of  womanly 
desires.  As  she  looked,  she  blushed  for  her  own  foolish- 
ness ;  and,  with  a  quick  hand,  cast  the  white  wood- 
flowers  into  the  center  of  the  pool.  It  seemed  to  her  now, 
though  only  a  moment  earlier  she  had  gatherd  them,  so 
senseless  and  so  idle  to  have  decked  herself  with  their 
borrowed  loveliness.  As  if  for  such  things  as  these  he 
cared  ! 

Then,  slowly,  and  with  her  head  sunk,  she  entered  his 
dwelling-place. 

Arslan  stood  with  his  face  turned  from  her,  bending 
down  over  a  trestle  of  wood. 


284  .FOLLE-FARINE. 

He  did  not  hear  her  as  she  approached  ;  she  drew 
quite  close  to  him  and  looked  where  she  saw  that  he 
looked ;  down  on  the  wooden  bench.  •  What  she  saw 
were  a  long  falling  stream  of  light-hued  hair,  a  gray  still 
face,  closed  eyes,  and  naked  limbs,  which  did  not  stir 
save  when  his  hand  moved  them  a  little  in  their  posture, 
and  which  then  dropped  from  his  hold  like  lead. 

She  did  not  shudder  nor  exclaim  ;  she  only  looked  with 
quiet  and  incurious  eyes.  In  the  life  of  the  poor  such  a 
sight  has  neither  novelty  nor  terror. 

It  did  not  even  seem  strange  to  her  to  see  it  in  such  a 
place.  He  starred  slightly  as  he  grew  sensible  of  her 
presence,  and  turned,  and  threw  a  black  cloth  over  the 
trestle. 

11  Do  not  look  there, "  he  said  to  her.  '*  I  had  forgotten 
you.     Otherwise " 

"  I  have  looked  there.     It  is  only  a  dead  woman." 

"  Only  1     What  makes  you  say  that  ?" 

"  I  do  not  know.     There  are  many — are  there  not  ?" 

He  looked  at  her  in  surprise  seeing  that  this  utter  lack 
of  interest  or  curiosity  was  true  and  not  assumed ;  that 
awe,  and  reverence,  and  dread,  and  all  emotions  which 
rise  in  human  hearts  before  the  sight  or  memory  of  death 
were  wholly  absent  from  her. 

"  There  are  many  indeed,"  he  made  answer,  slowly. 
"Just  there  is  the  toughest  problem — it  is  the  insect  life 
of  the  world ;  it  is  the  clouds  of  human  ephemerae,  be- 
gotten one  summer  day  to  die  the  next;  it  is  the  millions 
on  millions  of  men  and  women  born,  as  it  were,  only  to 
be -choked  by  the  reek  of  cities,  and  then  fade  out  to 
nothing;  it  is  the  numbers  that  kill  one's  dreams  of  im- 
mortality I" 

She  looked  wearily  up  at  him,  not  comprehending,  and, 
indeed,  he  had  spoken  to  himself  and  not  to  her;  she 
lifted  up  one  corner  of  the  cere  cloth  and  gazed  a  little 
while  at  the  dead  face,  the  face  of  a  girl  young,  and  in  a 
slight,  soft,  youthful  manner,  fair. 

"  It  is  Fortis,  the  ragpicker's  daughter,"  she  said,  in- 
differently, and  dropped  back  the  sheltering  cloth.  She 
did  not  know  what  nor  why  she  envied,  and  yet  she  was 
jealous  of  this  white  dead  thing  that  abode  there  so 


FOLLE-FAHINE.  285 

peacefully  and  so  happily  with  the  caress  of  his  touch  on 
its  calm  limbs. 

"  Yes,"  he  answered  her.  "It  is  his  daughter.  She 
died  twenty  hours  ago, — of  low  fever,  they  say — famine, 
no  doubt," 

"  Why  do  you  have  her  here  ?"  She  felt  no  sorrow 
for  the  dead  girl ;  the  girl  had  mocked  and  jibed  her 
many  a  time  as  a  dark  witch  devil-born ;  she  only  felt  a 
jealous  and  restless  hatred  of  her  intrusion  here. 

"  The  dead  sit  to  me  often,"  he  said,  with  a  certain 
smile  that  had  sadness  and  yet  coldness  in  it. 

"Why?" 

"  That  they  may  tell  me  the  secrets  of  life." 

"  Do  they  tell  them  ?" 

"A  few; — most  they  keep.  See, — I  paint  death;  I 
must  watch  it  to  paint  it.  It  is  dreary  work,  you  think  ? 
It  is  not  so  to  me.  The  surgeon  seeks  his  kind  of  truth  ; 
I  seek  mine.  The  man  Fortis  came  to  me  on  the  river- 
side last  night.  He  said  to  me,  '  You  like  studying  the 
dead,  they  say ;  have  my  dead  for  a  copper  coin.  I  am 
starving;  — and  it  cannot  hurt  her.'  So  I  gave  him  the 
coin — though  I  am  as  poor  as  he — and  I  took  the  dead 
woman  Why  do  you  look  like  that?  It  is  nothing  to 
you ;  the  girl  shall  go  to  her  grave  when  I  have  done 
with  her." 

She  bent  her  head  in  assent.  It  was  nothing  to  her; 
and  yet  it  filled  her  with  a  cruel  feverish  jealousy,  it 
weighed  on  her  with  a  curious  pain. 

She  did  not  care  for  the  body  lying  there — it  had  been 
but  the  other  day  that  the. dead  girl  had  shot  her  lips  out 
at  her  in  mockery  and  called  her  names  from  a  balcony  in 
an  old  ruined  house  as  the  boat  drifted  past  it ;  but  there 
passed  over  her  a  dreary  shuddering  remembrance  that 
she,  likewise,  might  one  day  lie  thus  before  him  and  be 
no  more  to  him  than  this.  The  people  said  that  he  who 
studied  death,  brought  death. 

The  old  wistful  longing  that  had  moved  her,  when 
Marcellin  had  died,  to  lay  her  down  in  the  cool  water  and 
let  it  take  her  to  long  sleep  and  to  complete  forgetfulness 
returned  to  her  again.  Since  the  dead  were  of  value  to 
him,  best,  she  thought,  be  of  them,  and  lie  here  in  that 


286  FOLLE-FARINE. 

dumb  still  serenity,  caressed  by  his  touch  and  his  regard. 
For,  in  a  manner,  .she  was  jealous  of  this  woman,  as  of 
some  living  rival  who  had,  in  her  absence,  filled  her  place 
and  been  of  use  to  him  and  escaped  his  thought. 

Any  ghastliness  or  inhumanity  in  this  search  of  his  for 
the  truth  of  his  art  amidst  the  frozen  limbs  and  rigid 
muscles  of  a  corpse,  never  occurred  to  her.  To  her  he  was 
like  a  deity;  to  her  these  poor  weak  shreds  of  broken 
human  lives,  these  fragile  empty  vessels,  whose  wine  of 
life  had  been  spilled  like  water  that  runs  to  waste,  seemed 
beyond  measurement  to  be  exalted  when  deemed  by  him 
oj  value. 

She  would  have  thought  no  more  of  grudging  them  if 
his  employ  and  in  his  service  than  priests  of  Isis  or  of 
Eleusis  would  have  begrudged  the  sacrificed  lives  on 
beasts  and  birds  that  smoked  upon  their  temple  altars. 
To  die  at  his  will  and  be  of  use  to  him ; — this  seemed 
to  her  the  most  supreme  glory  fate  could  hold ;  and  she 
envied  the  ragpicker's  daughter  lying  there  in  such  calm 
content. 

"  Why  do  you  look  so  much  at  her  ?"  he  said  at  length. 
"  I  shall  do  her  no  harm  ;  if  I  did,  what  would  she 
know  tn 

"I  was  not  thinking  of  her,"  she  answered  slowly, 
with  a  certain  perplexed  pain  upon  her  face.  "  I  was 
thinking  I  might  be  of  more  use  to  you  if  1  were  dead. 
You  must  not  kill  me,  because  men  would  hurt  you  for 
that ;  but,  if  you  wish,  I  will  kill  myself  to-night.  I  have 
often  thought  of  it  lately." 

He  started  at  the  strangeness  and  the  suddenness  of 
the  words  spoken  steadily  and  with  perfect  sincerity  and 
simplicity  in  the  dialect  of  the  district,  with  no  sense  in 
their  speaker  of  anything  unusual  being  offered  in  them. 
His  eyes  tried  to  search  the  expression  of  her  face  with 
greater  interest  and  curiosity  than  they  had  ever  done ; 
and  they  gained  from  their  study  but  little. 

For  the  innumerable  emotions  awakening  in  her  were 
only  dimly  shadowed  there,  and  had  in  them  the  con- 
fusion of  all  imperfect  expression.  He  could  not  tell 
whether  here  was  a  great  soul  struggling  through  the 
bonds  of  an  intense  ignorance  and  stupefaction,  or  whether 


FOLLE-FARWE.  287 

there  were  only  before  him  an  animal  perfect,  wonder- 
fully perfect,  in  its  physical  development,  but  mindless  as 
any  clod  of  earth. 

He  did  not  know  how  to  answer  her. 

"  Why  should  you  think  of  death  ?"  he  said  at  last. 
11  Is  your  life  so  bitter  to  you  ?" 

She  stared  at  him. 

11  Is  a  beaten  dog's  bitter?  or  is  a  goaded  ox's  sweet?" 

"  But  you  are  so  young, — and  you  are  handsome,  and 
a  woman  ?" 

She  laughed  a  little. 

"  A  woman  1     Marcellin  said  that." 

"  Well  1     What  is  there  strange  in  saying  it  ?" 

She  pointed  to  the  corpse  which  the  last  sunrays  were 
brightening,  till  the  limbs  were  as  alabaster  and  the  -hair 
was  as  gold. 

"  That  was  a  woman — a  creature  that  is  white  and 
rose,  and  has  yellow  hair  and  laughs  in  the  faces  of  men, 
and  has  a  mother  that  kisses  her  lips,  and  sees  the  chil- 
dren come  to  play  at  her  knees.  I  am  not  one.  I  am  a 
devil,  they  say." 

His  mouth  smiled  with  a  touch  of  sardonic  humor, 
whose  acrimony  and  whose'  irony  escaped  her. 

"  What  have  you  done  so  good,  or  so  great,  that  your 
world  should  call  you  so  ?" 

Her  eyes  clouded  and  lightened  alternately. 

"You  do  not  believe  that  I  am  a  devil?" 

"How  should  I  tell  ?  If  you  covet  the  title  claim  it, 
— you  have  a  right, — you  are  a  woman  !" 

M  Always  a  woman  I"  she  muttered  with  disappoint- 
ment and  with  impatience.  9 

"  Always  a  woman,"  he  echoed  as  he  pointed  to  the 
god  Hermes.  "And  there  is  your  creator." 

"He!" 

She  looked  rapidly  and  wistfully  at  the  white-winged 
god. 

"  Yes.  He  made  Woman  ;  for  he  made  her  mind  out 
of  treachery  and  her  words  out  of  the  empty  wind.  He- 
phaestus made  her  heart,  fusing  for  it  brass  and  iron. 
Their  work  has  worn  well.  It  has  not  changed  in  all 
these  ages.     But  what  is  your  history  ?     Go  and  lie  yon- 


288  FOLLE-FARINE. 

der,  where  you  were  last  night,  and  tell  me  your  story 
while  I  work." 

She  obeyed  him  and  told  him  what  she  knew ;  lying 
there,  where  he  had  motioned  her,  in  the  shadow  under 
the  figures  of  the  three  grandsons  of  Chaos.  He  listened, 
and  wrought  on  at  her  likeness. 

The  story,  as  she  told  it  in  her  curt  imperfect  words, 
was  plain  enough  to  him,  though  to  herself  obscure.  It 
had  in  some  little  measure  a  likeness  to  his  own. 

It  awakened  a  certain  compassion  for  her  in  his  heart, 
which  was  rarely  moved  to  anything  like  pity.  For  to 
him  nature  was  so  much  and  man  so  little,  the  one  so 
majestic  and  so  exhaustless,  the  other  so  small  and  so 
ephemeral,  that  human  wants  and  human  woes  touched 
him  but  very  slightly.  His  own,  even  at  their  darkest, 
moved  him  rather  to  self-contempt  than  to  self-compassion, 
for  these  were  evils  of  the  body  and  of  the  senses. 

As  a  boy  he  had  had  no  ear  to  the  wail  of  the  frozen  and 
famishing  people  wandering  homeless  over  the  waste  of 
drifted  snow,  where  but  the  night  before  a  village  had 
nestled  in  the  mountain  hollow ;  all  his  senses  had  been 
given  in  a  trance  of  awe  and  rapture  to  the  voices  of  the 
great  winds  sweeping  down  from  the  heights  through  the 
pine-forests,  and  the  furious  seas  below  gnashing  and 
raging  on  the  wreck-strewn  strand.  It  was  with  these 
last  that  he  had  had  kinship  and  communion:  these  en- 
dured always;  but  for  the  men  they  slew,  what  were 
they  more  in  ttfe  great  sum  of  time  than  forest-leaves  or 
ocean  driftwood  ? 

And,  indeed,  to  those  who  are  alive  to  the  nameless, 
universal,  eternal  soul  which  breathes  in  all  the  grasses 
of  the  fiekll,  and  beams  in  the  eyes  of  all  creatures  of 
earth  and  air,  and  throbs  in  the  living  light  of  palpitating 
stars,  and  thrills  through  the  young  sap  of  forest  trees, 
and  stirs  in  the  strange  loves  of  wind-borne  plants,  and 
hums  in  every  song  of  the  bee,  and  burns  in  every  quiver 
of  the  flame,  and  peoples  with  sentient  myriads  every 
drop  of  dew  that  gathers  on  a  harebell,  every  bead  of 
water  that  ripples  in  a  brook — to  these  the  mortal  life  of 
man  can  seem  but  little,  save  at  once  the  fiercest  and  the 
feeblest  thing  that  does  exist;  at  once  the  most  cruel  and 


FOLLE-FARINE.  289 

the  most  impotent ;  tyrant  of  direst  destruction  and  bonds- 
man of  lowest  captivity.  Hence  pity  entered  very  little 
into  his  thoughts  at  any  time  ;  the  perpetual  torture  of  life 
did  indeed  perplex  him,  as  it  perplexes  every  thinking 
creature,  wit!)  wonder  at  the  universal  bitterness  that 
taints  all  creation,  at  the  universal  death  whereby  all  forms 
of  life  are  nurtured,  at  the  universal  anguish  of  all  exist- 
ence which  daily  and  nightly  assails  the  unknown  God 
in  piteous  protest  at  the  inexorable  laws  of  inexplicable 
miseries  and  mysteries.  But  because  such  suffering  was 
thus  universal,  therefore  he  almost  ceased  to  feel  pity  for 
it;  of  the  two  he  pitied  the  beasts  far  more  than  the 
human  kind : — the  horse  staggering  beneath  the  lash  in 
all  the  feebleness  of  hunger,  lameness,  and  old  age  ;  the  ox 
bleeding  from  the  goad  on  the  hard  furrows,  or  stumbling 
through  the  hooting  crowd,  blind,  footsore  and  shivering 
to  its  last  home  in  the  slaughter-house  ;  the  dog,  yielding 
up  its  noble  life  inch  by  inch  under  the  tortures  of  the 
knife,  loyally  licking  the  hand  of  the  vivisector  while  he 
drove  his  probe  through  its  quivering  nerves;  the  unut- 
terable hell  in  which  all  these  gentle,  kindly  and  long- 
suffering  creatures  dwelt  for  the  pleasure  or  the  vanity, 
the  avarice  or  the  brutality  of  men, — these  he  pitied  per- 
petually, with  a  tenderness  for  them  that  was  the  softest 
thing  in  all  his  nature. 

But  when  he  saw  men  and  women  suffer  he  often 
smiled,  not  ill  pleased.  It  seemed  to  him  that  the  worst 
they  could  ever  endure  was  only  such  simple  retribution, 
such  mere  fair  measure  of  all  the  agonies  they  cast  broad- 
cast. 

Therefore  he  pitied  her  now  for  what  repulsed  all  others 
from  her — that  she  had  so  little  apparent  humanity,  and 
that  she  was  so  like  an  animal  in  her  strength  and  weak- 
ness, and  in  her  ignorance  of  both  her  rights  and  wrongs. 
Therefore  he  pitied  her ;  and  there  was  that  in  her 
strange  kind  of  beauty,  in  her  half-savage,  half-timid 
attitudes,  in  her  curt,  unlearned,  yet  picturesque  speech, 
which  attracted  him.  Besides,  although  solitude  was  his 
preference,  he  had  been  for  more  than  two  years  utterly 
alone,  his  loneliness  broken  only  by  the  companionship 
of  boors,  with  whom  he  had  not  had  one  thought  in  com- 

25 


290  FOLLE-FARINE. 

mon.  The  extreme  poverty  in  which  the  latter  months 
of  his  life  had  been  passed,  had  excluded  him  from  all 
human  society,  since  he  could  have  sought  none  without 
betraying  his  necessities.  The  alms-seeking  visit  of  some 
man  even  more  famished  and  desperate  than  himself,  such 
as  the  ragpicker  who  had  brought  the  dead  girl  to  him  for 
a  few  brass  coins,  had  been  the  only  relief  to  the  endless 
monotony  of  his  existence,  a  relief  that  made  such  change 
in  it  worse  than  its  continuance. 

In  Folle-Farine,  for  the  first  time  in  two  long,  bitter, 
colorless,  hated  years,  there  was  something  which  aroused 
his  interest  and  his  curiosity,  some  one  to  whom  impulse 
led  him  to  speak  the  thoughts  of  his  mind  with  little  con- 
cealment. She  seemed,  indeed,  scarcely  more  than  i  wild" 
beast,  half  tamed,  inarticulate,  defiant,  shy,  it  might  be 
even,  if  aroused,  ferocious;  but  it  was  an  animal  whose 
eyes  dilated  in  quickening  sympathy  with  all  his  moods, 
and  an  animal  whom,  at  a  glance,  he  knew  would,  in  time, 
crawl  to  him  or  combat  for  him  as  he  chose. 

He  talked  to  her  now,  much  on  the  same  impulse  that 
moves  a  man,  long  imprisoned,  to  converse  with  the  spider 
that  creeps  on  the  floor,  with  the  mouse  that  drinks  from 
his  pitcher,  and  makes  him  treat  like  an  intelligent  being 
the  tiny  flower  growing  blue  and  bright  between  the 
stones,  which  is  all  that  brings  life  into  his  loneliness. 

The  prison  door  once  flung  open,  the  sunshine  once 
streaming  across  the  darkness,  the  fetters  once  struck  off, 
the  captive  once  free  to  go  out  again  among  his  fellows, 
then — the  spider  is  left  to  miss  the  human  love  that  it 
has  learnt,  the  mouse  is  left  to  die  of  thirst,  the  little 
blue  flower  is  left  to  fade  out  as  it  may  in  the  stillness 
and  the  gloom  alone.  Then  they  are  nothing  :  but  while 
the  prison  doors  are  still  locked  they  are  much. 

Here  the  jailer  was  poverty,  and  the  prison  was  the 
world's  neglect,  and  they  who  lay  bound  were  high  hopes, 
great  aspirations,  impossible  dreams,  immeasurable  am- 
bitions, all  swathed  and  fettered,  and  straining  to  be  free 
with  dumb,  mad  force  against  bonds  that  would  not  break. 
^  And  in  these,  in  their  bondage,  there  were  little  pa- 
tience, or  sympathy,  or  softness,  and  to  them,  even  nature 
itself  at  times  looked  horrible,  though  never  so  horrible. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  291 

because  never  so  despicable,  as  humanity.  Yet,  still  even 
in  these  an  instinct  of  companionship  abided ;  and  this 
creature,  with  a  woman's  beauty,  and  an  animal's  fierce- 
ness and  innocence,  was  in  a  manner  welcome. 

"  Why  were  women  ever  made,  then  ?"  she  said,  after 
awhile,  following,  though  imperfectly,  the  drift  of  his  last 
words,  where  she  lay  stretched  obedient  to  his  will,  under 
the  shadow  of  the  wall. 

He  smiled  the  smile  of  one  who  recalls  some  story  he 
has  heard  from  the  raving  lips  of  some  friend  fever- 
stricken. 

"  Once,  long  ago,  in  the  far  East,  there  dwelt  a  saint  in 
the  desert.  He  was  content  in  his  solitude :  he  was  holy 
and  at  peace :  the  honey  of  the  wild  bee  and  the  fruit  of 
the  wild  tamarisk-tree  sufficed  to  feed  him  ;  the  lions  were 
his  ministers,  and  the  hyenas  were  his  slaves  ;  the  eagle 
flew  down  for  his  blessing,  and  the  winds  and  the  storms 
were  his  messengers;  he  had  killed  the  beast  in  him,  and 
the  soul  alone  had  dominion ;  and  day  and  night,  upon 
the  lonely  air,  he  breathed  the  praise  of  God. 

"Years  went  with  him  thus,  and  he  grew  old,  and  he 
said  to  himself,  '  I  have  lived  content ;  so  shall  I  die  puri- 
fied, and  ready  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven.'  For  it  was 
in  the  day  when  that  wooden  god,  who  hangs  on  the 
black  cross  yonder,  was  not  a  lifeless  effigy,  as  now,  but 
had  a  name  of  power  and  of  might,  adjuring  which,  his 
people  smiled  under  torture,  and  died  iu  the  flame,  dream- 
ing of  a  land  where  the  sun  never  set,  and  the  song 
never  ceased,  and  the  faithful  forever  were  at  rest. 

"  So  the  years,  I  say,  went  by  with  him,  and  he  was 
glad  and  at  peace. 

u  One  night,  when  the  thunder  rolled  and  the  rain  tor- 
rents fell,  to  the  door  of  his  cave  there  came  a  wayfarer, 
fainting,  sickly,  lame,  trembling  with  terror  of  the  desert, 
and  beseeching  him  to  save  her  from  the  panthers. 

"  He  was  loth,  and  dreaded  to  accede  to  her  prayer, 
for  he  said,  ■  Wheresoever  a  woman  enters,  there  the  con- 
tent of  a  man  is  dead.'  But  she  was  in  dire  distress,  and 
entreated  him  with  tears  and  supplications  not  to  turn 
her  adrift  for  the  lightning  and  the  lions  to  devour:  and 
he  felt  the  old  human  pity  steal  on  him,  and  he  opened 


292  FOL  L  E-FA  R IXE. 

the  door  to  her,  and  bade  her  eater  and  be  at  sanctuary 
there  in  God's  name. 

"But  when  she  had  entered,  age,  and  sickness,  and 
want  fell  from  olF  her,  her  eyes  grew  as  two  stars,  her 
lips  were  sweet  as  the  rose  of  the  desert,  her  limbs  had 
the  grace  of  the  cheetah,  her  body  had  the  radiance  and 
the  fragrance  of  frankincense  on  an  altar  of  gold.  And 
she  laughed  in  his  beard,  and  cried,  saying,  '  Thou  think- 
est  thou  hast  lived,  and  yet  thou  hast  not  loved  !  Oh, 
sage  !  oh,  saint !  oh,  fool,  fool,  fool  !'  Then  into  his  veins 
there  rushed  youth,  and  into  his  brain  there  came  mad- 
ness ;  the  life  he  had  led  seemed  but  death,  and  eternity 
loathsome  since  passionless  ;  and  he  stretched  his  arms  to 
her  and  sought  to  embrace  her,  crying,  'Stay  with  me, 
though  I  buy  thee  with  hell.'     And  she  stayed. 

u  But  when  the  morning  broke  she  left  him  laughing, 
gliding  like  a  phantom  from  his  arms,  and  out  into  the 
red  sunlight,  and  across  the  desert  sand,  laughing,  laugh- 
iug,  always,  and  mocking  him  whilst  she  beckoned.  He 
pursued  her,  chasing  her  through  the  dawn,  through  the 
noon,  through  the  night.  lie  never  found  her;  she  had 
vanished  us  the  rose  of  the  rainbow  fades  out  of  the  sky. 

"  He  searched  for  her  in  every  city,  and  in  every  land. 
Some  say  he  searches  still,  doomed  to  live  on  through 
every  age  and  powerless  to  die." 

He  had  a  certain  power  over  words  as  over  color. 
Like  all  true  painters,  the  fiber  of  his  mind  was  sensu- 
ous and  poetic,  though  the  quality  of  passionate  imagi- 
nation was  in  him  welded  with  a  coldness  and  a  stillness 
of  temper  born  in  him  with  his  northern  blood.  He  had 
dwelt  much  in  the  Asiatic  countries,  and  much  of  the 
philosophies  and  much  of  the  phraseology  of  the  East  re- 
mained with  him.  Something  even  there  seemed  in  him 
of  the  mingled  asceticism  and  sensualism,  the  severe  self- 
denial,  with  the  voluptuous  fancy  of  the  saints  who  once 
had  peopled  the  deserts  in  which  he  had  in  turn  delighted 
to  dwell,  free  and  lonely,  scorning  women  and  deserting 
men.  He  spoke  seldom,  being  by  nature  silent;  but 
when  he  did  speak,  his  language  was  unconsciously  varied 
into  picture-like  formations. 

She  listened  breathless,  with  the  color  in  her  cheeks 


FOLLE-FARINE.  293 

% 
and  the  fire  brooding  in  her  eyes,  her  unformed   mind 
catching  the  swift  shadowy  allegories  of  his  tale  by  force 
of  the  poetic  instincts  in  her. 

No  one  had  ever  talked  to  her  thus ;  and  yet  it  seemed 
clear  to  her  and  beautiful,  like  the  story  that  the  great 
sunflowers  told  as  they  swayed  to  and  fro  in  the  light, 
like  the  song  that  the  bright  brook-water  sung  as  it 
purred  and  sparkled  under  the  boughs. 

"  That  is  true  ?"  she  said,  suddenly,  at  length. 

**  It  is  a  saint's  story  in  substance  ;  it  is  true  in  spirit 
for  all  time." 

Her  breath  came  with  a  sharp,  swift,  panting  sound. 
She  was  blinded  with  the  new  light  that  broke  in  on  her. 

"  If  I  be  a  woman,  shall  I,  then,  be  such  a  woman  as 
that?" 

Arslan  rested  his  eyes  on  her  with  a  grave,  half-sad, 
half-sardonic  smile. 

"  Why  not  ?  You  are  the  devil's  daughter,  you  say. 
Of  such  are  men's  kingdom  of  heaven  J" 

She  pondered  long  upon  his  answer ;  she  could  not 
comprehend  it;  she  had  understood  the  parable  of  his 
narrative,  yet  the  passion  of  it  had  passed  by  her,  and 
the  evil  shut  in  it  had  escaped  her. 

"  Do,  then,  men  love  what  destroys  them  ?"  she  asked, 
slowly. 

"Always  1"  he  made  answer,  still  with  that  same  smile 
as  of  one  who  remembers  hearkening  to  the  delirious 
ravings  round  him  in  a  madhouse  through  which  he  has 
walked — himself  sane — in  a  bygone  time. 

"I  do  not  want  love,"  she  said,  suddenly,  while  her 
brain,  half  strong,  half  feeble,  struggled  to  fit  her  thoughts 
to  words.  "  I  want — I  want  to  have  power,  as  the  priest 
has  on  the  people  when  he  says,  '  Pray  1'  and  they  pray." 

"  Power!"  he  echoed,  as  the  devotee  echoes  the  name 
of  his  god.  "  Who  does  not  ?  But  do  you  think  the 
woman  that  tempted  the  saint  had  none  ?  If  ever  you 
reach  that  kingdom  such  power  will  become  yours." 

A  proud  glad  exultation  swept  over  her  face  for  a 
moment.  It  quickly  faded.  She  did  not  believe  in  a 
future.  How  many  times  had  she  not,  since  the  hand  of 
Claudis  Flamma  first  struck   her,  prayed   with  all  the 

25* 


294  FOLLE-FARINE. 

passion  of  a  child's  dumb  agony  that  the  dominion  of  her 
Father's  power  might  come  to  her  ?  And  the  great  Evil 
had  never  hearkened.  He,  whom  all  men  around  her 
feared,  had  made  her  no  sign  that  he  heard,  but  left  her 
to  blows,  to  solitude,  to  continual  hunger,  to  perpetual 
toil. 

"  I  have  prayed  to  the  devil  again  and  again  and  he 
will  not  hear,"  she  muttered.  "  Marcellin  says  that  he 
has  ears  for  all.     But  for  me  he  has  none." 

"  He  has  too  much  to  do  to  hear  all.  All  the  nations 
of  the  earth  beseech  him.  Yonder  man  on  the  cross  they 
adjure  with  their  mouths  indeed  ;  but  it  is  your  god  only 
whom  in  their  hearts  they  worship.  See  how  the  Christ 
hangs  his  head  :  he  is  so  weary  of  lip  service." 

11  But  since  they  give  the  Christ  so  many  temples,  why 
do  they  raise  none  to  the  devil  ?" 

"  Chut !  No  man  builds  altars  to  his  secret  god. 
Look  you :  I  will  tell  you  another  story :  once,  in  an 
Eastern  land,  there  was  a  temple  dedicated  to  all  the 
various  deities  of  all  the  peoples  that  worshiped  under 
the  sun.  There  were  many  statues  and  rare  ones ; 
statues  of  silver  and  gold,  of  ivory,  and  agate,  and  chal- 
cedony, and  there  were  altars  raised  before  all,  on  which 
every  nation  offered  up  sacrifice  and  burned  incense  before 
its  divinity. 

"Now,  no  nation  would  look  at  the  god  of  another; 
and  each  people  clustered  about  the  feet  of  its  own  fetich, 
and  glorified  it,  crying  out,  '  There  is  no  god  but  this  god.' 

"  The  noise  was  fearful,  and  the  feuds  were  many,  and 
the  poor  king,  whose  thought  it  had  been  to  erect  such  a 
temple,  was  confounded,  and  very  sorrowful,  and  mur- 
mured, saying,  'I  dreamed  to  beget  universal  peace  and 
tolerance  and  harmony ;  and  lo !  there  come  of  my 
thought  nothing  but  discord  and  war.' 

"  Then  to  him  there  came  a  stranger,  veiled,  and 
claiming  no  country,  and  he  said,  '  You  were  mad  to 
dream  religion  could  ever  be  peace,  yet,  be  not  disquieted  ; 
give  me  but  a  little  place  and  I  will  erect  an  altar  whereat 
all  men  shall  worship,  leaving  their  own  gods.' 

"  The  king  gave  him  permission ;  and  4ie  raised  up  a 
simple  stone,  and  on  it  he  wrote,  '  To  the  Secret  Sin !' 


FOLLE-FAIUNE.  295 

and,  being  a  sorcerer,  he  wrote  with  a  curious  power,  that 
showed  the  inscription  to  the  sight  of  each  man,  but 
blinded  him  whilst  he  gazed  on  it  to  all  sight  of  his 
fellows. 

"And  each  man  forsook  his  god,  and  came  and  kneeled 
before  this  nameless  altar,  each  bowing  down  before  it, 
and  each  believing  himself  in  solitude.  The  poor  for- 
saken gods  stood  naked  and  alone  ;  there  was  not  one 
man  left  to  worship  one  of  them." 

She  listened  ;  her  eloquent  eyes  fixed  on  him,  her  lips 
parted,  her  fancy  fantastic  and  full  of  dreams,  strength- 
ened by  loneliness,  and  unbridled  through  ignorance, 
steeping  itself  in  every  irony  and  every  fantasy,  and 
every  shred  of  knowledge  that  Chance,  her  only  teacher, 
cast  to  her. 

She  sat  thinking,  full  of  a  vague  sad  pity  for  that 
denied  and  forsaken  God  on  the  cross,  by  the  river,  such 
as  she  had  never  felt  before,  since  she  had  always  re- 
garded him  as  the  symbol  of  cruelty,  of  famine,  and  of 
hatred  ;  not  knowing  that  these' are  only  the  colors  which 
all  deities  alike  reflect  from  the  hearts  of  the  peoples  that 
worship  them. 

"  If  I  had  a  god,"  she  said,  suddenly,  "  if  a  god 
cared  to  claim  me — I  would  be  proud  of  his  worship 
everywhere." 

Arslan  smiled. 

"  All  women  have  a  god ;  that  is  why  they  are  at 
once  so  much  weaker  and  so  much  happier  than  men." 

"  Who  are  their  gods?" 

"  Their  name  is  legion.  Innocent  women  make  gods 
of  their  offspring,  of  their  homes,  of  their  housework,  of 
their  duties;  and  are  as  cruel  as  tigresses  meanwhile  to 
all  outside  the  pale  of  their  temples.  Others — less  inno- 
cent— make  gods  of  their  own  forms  and  faces  ;  of  bright 
stones  dug  from  the  earth,  of  vessels  of  gold  and  silver, 
of  purple  and  fine  linen,  of  passions,  and  vanities,  and 
desires ;  gods  that  they  consume  themselves  for  in  their 
youth,  and  that  they  curse,  and  beat,  and  upbraid  in  the 
days  of  their  age.    Which  of  these  gods  will  be  yours  ?" 

She  thought  awhile. 

"  None  of  them,"  she  said  at  last. 


296  FOLLE-FARINE. 

"  None  ?     What  will  you  put  in  their  stead,  then  V1 

She  thought  gravely  some  moments  again.  Although 
a  certain  terse  and  even  poetic  utterauce  was  the  shape 
which  her  spoken  imaginations  naturally  took  at  all  times, 
ignorance  and  solitude  had  made  it  hard  for  her  aptly  to 
marry  her  thoughts  to  words. 

"  I  do  not  know,"  she  said,  wearily.  "  Marcellin  says 
that  God  is  deaf.  He  must  be  deaf — or  very  cruel.  Look  ; 
everything  lives  in  pain;  and  yet  no  God  pities  and 
makes  an  end  of  the  earth.  I  would — if  I  were  He. 
Look — at  dawn,  the  other  day,  I  was  out  in  the  wood. 
I  came  upon  a  little  rabbit  in  a  trap ;  a  little,  pretty,  soft 
black-and-white  thing,  quite  young.  It  was  screaming 
in  its  horrible  misery ;  it  had  been  screaming  all  night. 
Its  thighs  were  broken  in  the  iron  teeth  ;  the  trap  held  it 
tight ;  it  could  not  escape,  it  could  only  scream — scream — 
scream.  All  in  vain.  Its  God  never  heard.  When  I 
got  it  free  it  was  mangled  as  if  a  wolf  had  gnawed  it ; 
the  iron  teeth  had  bitten  through  the  fur,  and  the  flesh, 
and  the  bone;  it  had  lost  so  much  blood,  and  it  was  in 
so  much  pain,  that  it  could  not  live.  I  laid  it  down  in 
the  bracken,  and  put  water  to  its  mouth,  and  did  what  I 
could ;  but  it  was  of  no  use.  It  had  been  too  much  hurt. 
It  died  as  the  sun  rose ;  a  little,  harmless,  shy,  happy 
thing,  you  know,  that  never  killed  any  creature,  and  only 
asked  to  nibble  a  leaf  or  two,  or  sleep  in  a  little  round 
hole,  and  run  about  merry  and  free.  How  can  one  care 
for  a  god  since  all  gods  let  these  things  be  ?" 

Arslan  smiled  as  he  heard. 

"  Child, — men  care  for  a  god  only  as  a  god  means  a 
good  to  them.  Men  are  heirs  of  heaven,  they  say ;  and, 
in  right  of  their  heritage,  they  make  life  hell  to  every 
living  thing  that  dares  dispute  the  world  with  them. 
You  do  not  understand  that, — tutl  You  are  not  human, 
then.  If  you  were  human,  you  would  begrudge  a  blade 
of  grass  to  a  rabbit,  and  arrogate  to  yourself  a  lease  of 
immortality." 

She  did  not  understand  him;  but  she  felt  that  she  was 
honored  by  him,  and  not  scorned  as  others  scorned  her, 
for  being  thus  unlike  humanity.  It  was  a  bitter  perplex- 
ity to  her,  this  earth  on  which  she  had  been  flung  amidst 


FOLLE-FARINE.  291 

an  alien  people ;  that  she  should  suffer  herself  seemed 
little  to  her,  it  had  become  as  a  second  nature;  but  the 
sufferings  of  all  the  innumerable  tribes  of  creation,  things 
of  the  woods,  and  the  field,  and  the  waters,  and  the  sky, 
that  toiled  and  sweated  and  were  hunted,  and  persecuted 
and  wrenched  in  torment,  and  finally  perished  to  gratify 
the  appetites  or  the  avarice  of  humanity — these  suffer- 
ings were  horrible  to  her  always:  inexplicable,  hideous, 
unpardonable,  —  a  crime  for  which  she  hated  God  and 
Man 

M  There  is  no  god  pitiful,  then  ?"  she  said,  at  length  ; 
"  no  god — not  one  ?" 

M  Only  those  Three,"  he  answered  her  as  he  motioned 
towards  the  three  brethren  that  watched  above  her. 

"  Are  they  your  gods  ?" 

A  smile  that  moved  her  to  a  certain  fear  of  him  passed 
a  moment  over  his  mouth. 

"  My  gods  ? — No.  They  are  the  gods  of  youth  and  of 
age — not  of  manhood." 

"  What  is  yours,  then  ?" 

"  Mine  ? — a  Moloch  who  consumes  my  offspring,  yet 
in  whose  burning  brazen  hands  I  have  put  them  and 
myself — forever. " 

She  looked  at  him  in  awe  and  in  reverence.  She 
imagined  him  the  priest  of  some  dark  and  terrible  re- 
ligion, for  whose  sake  he  passed  his  years  in  solitude  and 
deprivation,  and  by  whose  powers  he  created  the  won- 
drous shapes  that  rose  and  bloomed  around  him. 

"Those  are  gentler  gods?"  she  said,  timidly,  raising 
her  eyes  to  the  brethren  above  her.  "  Do  you  never — 
will  you  never — worship  them  ?" 

"  I  have  ceased  to  worship  them.  In  time — when  the 
world  has  utterly  beaten  me — no  doubt  I  shall  pray  to 
one  at  least  of  them.  To  that  one,  see,  the  eldest  of  the 
brethren,  who  holds  his  torch  turned  downward." 

"And  that  god  is " 

"  Death  !" 

She  was  silent. 

Was  this  god  not  her  god  also  ?  Had  she  not  chosen 
him  from  all  the  rest  and  cast  her  lite  down  at  his  feet 
for  this  man's  sake  ? 


298  FOLLE-FARINE. 

"  He  must  never  know,  he  must  never  know,"  she  said 
again  in  her  heart. 

And  Thanatos  she  knew  would  not  betray  her ;  for 
Thanatos  keeps  all  the  secrets  of  men, — he  who  alone  of 
all  the  gods  reads  the  truths  of  men's  souls,  and  smiles 
and  shuts  them  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand,  and  lets  the 
braggart  Time  fly  on  with  careless  feet  above  a  million 
graves,  telliug  what  lies  he  will  to  please  the  world  a 
little  space.  Thanatos  holds  silence,  and  can  wait;  for 
him  must  all  things  ripen  and  to  him  must  all  things  fall 
at  last. 


CHAPTER  V. 


When  she  left  him  that  night,  and  went  homeward,  he 
trimmed  his  lamp  and  returned  to  his  labors  of  casting 
and  modeling  from  the  body  of  the  ragpicker's  daughter. 
The  work  soon  absorbed  him  too  entirely  to  leave  any 
memory  with  him  of  the  living  woman.  He  did  not 
know — and  had  he  known  would  not  have  heeded — that 
instead  of  going  on  her  straight  path  back  to  Ypres  she 
turned  again,  and,  hidden  among  the  rushes  upon  the 
bank,  crouched,  half  sitting  and  half  kneeling,  to  watch 
him  from  the  riverside. 

It  was  all  dark  and  still  without ;  nothing  came  near, 
except  now  and  then  some  hobbled  mule  turned  out  to 
forage  for  his  evening  meal  or  some  night-browsing  cattle 
straying  out  of  bounds.  Once  or  twice  a  barge  went 
slowly  and  sullenly  by,  its  single  light  twinkling  across 
the  breadth  of  the  stream,  and  the  voices  of  its  steersman 
calling  huskily  through  the  fog.  A  drunken  peasant 
staggered  across  the  fields  singing  snatches  of  a  repub- 
lican march  that  broke  roughly  on  the-  silence  of  the 
night.  The  young  lambs  bleated  to  their  mothers  in  the 
meadows,  and  the  bells  of  the  old  clock  towers  in  the 
town  chimed  the  quarters  with  a  Laus  Deo  in  which  all 
their  metal  tongues  joined  musically. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  299 

She  remained  there  undisturbed  among  the  long  grasses 
and  the  tufts  of  the  reeds,  gazing  always  into  the  dimly- 
lighted  interior  where  the  pale  rays  of  the  oil  flame  lit  up 
the  white  forms  of  the  gods,  the  black  shadows  of  the 
columns,  the  shapes  of  the  wrestling  lion  and  the  strangled 
gladiator,  the  gray  stiff  frame  and  hanging  hair  of  the 
dead  body,  and  the  bending  figure  of  Arslan  as  he  stooped 
above  the  corpse  and  pursued  the  secret  powers  of  his 
art  into  the  hidden  things  of  death. 

To  her  there  seemed  nothing  terrible  in  a  night  thus 
spent,  in  a  vigil  thus  ghastly;  it  seemed  to  her  only  a 
part  of  his  strength  thus  to  make  death — men's  conqueror 
— his  servant  and  his  slave ;  she  only  begrudged  every 
passionless  touch  that  his  grasp  gave  to  those  frozen  and 
rigid  limbs  which  he  moved  to  and  fro  like  so  much  clay; 
she  only  envied  with  a  jealous  thirst  every  cold  caress 
that  his  hand  lent  to  that  loose  and  lifeless  hair  which  he 
swept  aside  like  so  much  flax. 

He  did  not  see  ;  he  did  not  know.  To  him  she  was  no 
more  than  any  bronze-winged,  golden-eyed  insect  that 
should  have  floated  in  on  a  night  breeze  and  been  painted 
by  him  and  been  cast  out  again  upon  the  darkness. 

He  worked  more  than  half  the  night — worked  until 
the  small  store  of  oil  he  possessed  burned  itself  out,  and 
left  the  hall  to  the  feeble  light  of  a  young  moon  shining 
through  dense  vapors.  He  dropped  his  tools,  and  rose 
and  walked  to  and  fro  on  the  width  of  the  great  stone 
floor.  His  hands  felt  chilled  to  the  bone  with  the  contact 
of  the  dead  flesh  ;  his  breathing  felt  oppressed  with  the 
heavy  humid  air  that  lay  like  ice  upon  his  lungs. 

The  dead  woman  was  nothing  to  him.  He  had  not 
once  thought  of  the  youth  that  had  perished  in  her  ;  of  the 
laughter  that  hunger  had  hushed  forever  on  the  colorless 
lips;  of  the  passion  blushes  that  had  died  out  forever  on 
the  ashen  cheeks ;  of  the  caressing  hands  of  mother  and 
of  lover  that  must  have  wandered  among  that  curling 
hair  ;  of  the  children  that  should  have  slept  on  that  white 
breast  so  smooth  and  cold  beneath  his  hand.  For  these 
he  cared  nothing,  and  thought  as  little.  The  dead  girl 
for  him  had  neither  sex  nor  story  ;  and  he  had  studied  all 
phases  and  forms  of  death  too  long  to  be  otherwise  than 


300  FOLLE-FARINE. 

familiar  with  them  all.  Yet  a  certain  glacial  despair 
froze  his  heart  as  he  left  her  body  lying  there  in  the 
flicker  of  the  struggling  moonbeams,  and,  himself,  pacing 
to  and  fro  in  his  solitude,  suffered  a  greater  bitterness 
than  death  in  his  doom  of  poverty  and  of  obscurity. 

The  years  of  his  youth  had  gone  in  fruitless  labor,  and 
the  years  of  his  manhood  were  gliding  after  them,  and 
yet  he  had  failed  so  utterly  to  make  his  mark  upon  his 
generation  that  he  could  only  maintain  his  life  by  the 
common  toil  of  the  common  hand-laborer,  and,  if  he  died 
on  the  morrow,  there  would  not  be  one  hand  stretched 
out  to  save  any  one  work  of  his  creation  from  the  house- 
wife's fires  or  the  lime-burner's  furnace. 

Cold  to  himself  as  to  all  others,  he  said  bitterly  in 
his  soul,  "What  is  Failure  except  Feebleness?  And 
what  is  it  to  miss  one's  mark  except  to  aim  wildly  and 
weakly  V 

He  told  himself  that  harsh  and  inexorable  truth  a  score 
of  times,  again  and  again,  as  he  walked  backward  and 
forward  in  the  solitude  which  only  that  one  dead  woman 
shared. 

He  told  himself  that  he  was  a  madman,  a  fool,  who 
spent  his  lifetime  in  search  and  worship  of  a  vain  eidolon, 
lie  told  himself  that  there  must  be  in  him  some  radical 
weakness,  some  inalienable  fault,  that  he  could  not  in  all 
these  years  find  strength  enough  to  compel  the  world  of 
men  to  honor  him.  Agony  overcame  him  as  he  thought 
and  thought  and  thought,  until  he  scorned  himself;  the 
supreme  agony  of  a  strong  nature  that  for  once  mistrusts 
itself  as  feebleness,  of  a  great  genius  that  for  once  de- 
spairs of  itself  as  self-deception. 

Had  he  been  the  fool  of  his  vanities  all  his  youth  up- 
ward ;  and  had  his  fellow-men  been  onlv  wise  and  clear 
of  sight  when  they  had  denied  him  and  refused  to  see  ex- 
cellence in  any  work  of  his  hand?  Almost,  he  told  him- 
self, it  must  be  so. 

He  paused  by  the  open  casement,  and  looked  outward, 
scarcely  knowing  what  he  did.  The  mists  were  heavy; 
the  air  was  loaded  with  damp  exhalations;  the  country 
was  profoundly  still ;  above-bead  only  a  few  stars  glim- 
mered here  and    there    through    the  haze.       The  peace, 


FOL  LE-FARINE.  301 

the  silence,  the  obscurity  were  abhorrent  to  him  ;  they 
seemed  to  close  upon  him,  and  imprison  him  ;  far  away 
were  the  lands  and  the  cities  of  men  that  he  had  known, 
far  away  were  all  the  color  and  the  strength  and  the 
strain  and  the  glory  of  living ;  it  seemed  to  him  as  though 
he  were  dead  also,  like  the  woman  on  the  trestle  yonder ; 
dead  in  some  deep  sea-grave  where  the  weight  of  the 
waters  kept  him  down  and  held  his  hands  powerless, 
and  shut  his  eyelids  from  all  sight,  while  the  living 
voices  and  the  living  footsteps  of  men  came  dimly  on 
his  ear  from  the  world  above:  voices,  not  one  of  which 
uttered  his  name ;  footsteps,  not  one  of  which  paused  by 
his  tomb. 

It  grew  horrible  to  him — this  death  in  life,  to  which 
in  the  freshness  of  manhood  he  found  himself  condemned. 

"  Oh,  God !"  he,  who  believed  in  no  God,  muttered  half 
aloud,  "  let  me  be  without  love,  wealth,  peace,  health, 
gladness,  all  my  life  long — let  me  be  crippled,  childless, 
beggared,  hated  to  the  latest  end  of  my  days.  Give  me 
only  to  be  honored  in  my  works ;  give  me  only  a  name 
that  men  cannot,  if  they  wish,  let  die." 

Whether  any  hearer  greater  than  man  heard  the  prayer, 
who  shall  say?  Daily  and  nightly,  through  all  the  gen- 
erations of  the  world,  the  human  creature  implores  from 
his  Creator  the  secrets  of  his  existence,  and  asks  in  vain. 
There  is  one  answer  indeed ;  but  it  is  the  answer  of  all 
the  million  races  of  the  universe,  which  only  cry,  "  We 
are  born  but  to  perish  ;  is  Humanity  a  thing  so  high  and 
pure  that  it  should  claim  exemption  from  the  universal 
and  inexorable  law  tn 

One  mortal  listener  heard,  hidden  among  the  hollow 
sighing  rushes,  bathed  in  the  moonlight  and  the  mists; 
aud  the  impersonal  passion  which  absorbed  him  found 
echo  in  this  inarticulate  imperfect  soul,  just  wakened  in 
its  obscurity  to  the  first  faint  meanings  of  its  mortal  life 
as  a  nest-bird  rouses  in  the  dawn  to  the  first  faint  pipe  of 
its  involuntary  cry. 

She  barely  knew  what  he  sought,  what  he  asked,  and 
yet  her  heart  ached  with  his  desire,  and  shared  the  bitter- 
ness of  his  denial.  What  kind  of  life  he  craved  in  the 
ages  to  come ;  what  manner  of  remembrance  he  yearned 

26 


302  FOLLE-FARINE. 

for  from  unborn  races  of  man  ;  what  thing  it  was  that  he 
besought  should  be  given  to  him  in  the  stead  of  all  love, 
all  peace,  all  personal  woes  and  physical  delights,  she  did 
not  know;  the  future  to  her  had  no  meaning;  and  the 
immortal  fame  that  he  craved  was  an  unknown  god,  of 
whose  worship  she  had  no  comprehension  ;  and  yet  she 
vaguely  felt  that  what  he  sought  was  that  his  genius  still 
should  live  when  his  body  should  be  destroyed,  and  that 
those  mute,  motionless,  majestic  shapes  which  arose  at 
his  bidding  should  become  characters  and  speak  for  him 
to  all  the  generations  of  men  when  his  own  mouth  should 
be  sealed  dumb  in  death. 

This  hunger  of  the  soul  which  unmanned  and  tortured 
him,  though  the  famine  of  the  flesh  had  had  no  power  to 
move  him,  thrilled  her  with  the  instinct  of  its  greatness. 
This  thirst  of  the  mind,  which  could  not  slake  itself  in 
common  desire  or  sensual  satiety,  or  any  peace  and  pleas- 
ure of  the  ordinary  life  of  man,  had  likeness  in  it  to  that 
dim  instinct  which  had  made  her  nerves  throb  at  the 
glories  of  the  changing  skies,  and  her  eyes  fill  with  tears 
at  the  sound  of  a  bird's  singing  in  the  darkness  of  dawn, 
and  her  heart  yearn  with  vain  nameless  longing  as  for 
some  lost  land,  for  some  forgotten  home,  in  the  radiant 
hush  of  earth  and  air  at  sunrise.  He  suffered  as  she 
suffered  ;  and  a  sweet  newborn  sense  of  unity  and  of 
likeness  stirred  in  her  amidst  the  bitter  pity  of  her  soul. 
To  her  he  was  as  a  king :  and  yet  he  was  powerless. 
To  give  him  power  she  would  have  died  a  thousand 
deaths. 

"  The  gods  gave  me  life  for  him,"  she  thought.  "  His 
life  instead  of  mine.  Will  they  forget?  —  Will  they 
forget  ?" 

And  where  she  crouched  in  the  gloom  beneath  the  bul- 
rushes she  flung  herself  down  prostrate  in  supplication, 
her  face  buried  in  the  long  damp  river-grass. 

"Oh,  Immortals,"  she  implored,  in  benighted,  wistful, 
passionate  faith,  "  remember  to  give  me  his  life  and  take 
mine.  Do  what  you  choose  with  me ;  forsake  me,  kill 
me ;  cast  my  body  to  fire,  and  my  ashes  to  the  wind ; 
let  me  be  trampled  like  the  dust,  and  despised  as  the 
chaff;  let  me  be  bruised,  beaten,  nameless,  hated  always  ; 


FOLLE-FARINE.  303 

let  me  always  suffer  and  always  be  scorned ;  but  grant 
me  this  one  thing — to  give  him  his  desire  !" 

Unless  the  gods  gave  him  greatness,  she  knew  that 
vain  would  be  the  gift  of  life — the  gift  of  mere  length  of 
years  which  she  had  bought  for  him. 

Her  mind  had  been  left  blank  as  a  desert,  whilst  in  its 
solitude  dreams  had  sprung  forth  windsown,  like  way- 
side grasses,  and  vague  desires  wandered  like  wild  doves: 
but  although  blank,  the  soil  was  rich  and  deep  and  virgin. 

Because  she  had  dwelt  sundered  from  her  kind  she 
had  learned  no  evil :  a  stainless  though  savage  innocence 
had  remained  with  her.  She  had  been  reared  in  hard- 
ship and  inured  to  hunger  until  such  pangs  seemed  to 
her  scarce  worth  the  counting  save  perhaps  to  see  if 
they  had  been  borne  with  courage  and  without  murmur. 
On  her,  profoundly  unconscious  of  the  meaning  of  any 
common  luxury  or  any  common  comfort,  the  passions 
of  natures,  more  worldly-wise  and  better  aware  of  the 
empire  of  gold,  had  no  hold  at  any  moment.  x  To  toil 
dully  and  be  hungry  and  thirsty,  and  fatigued  and  foot- 
sore, had  been  her  daily  portion.  She  knew  nothing  of 
the  innumerable  pleasures  and  powers  that  the  rich  com- 
mand. She  knew  scarcely  of  the  existence  of  the  sim- 
plest forms  of  civilization  :  therefore  she  knew  nothing 
of  all  that  he  missed  through  poverty ;  she  only  perceived, 
by  an  unerring  instinct  of  appreciation,  all  that  he  gained 
through  genius. 

Her  mind  was  profoundly  ignorant;  her  character 
trained  by  cruelty  only  to  endurance:  yet  the  soil  was 
not  rank  out  only  untilled,  not  barren  but  only  unsown  ; 
nature  had  made  it  generous,  though  fate  had  left  it  un- 
tilled ;  it  grasped  the  seed  of  the  first  great  idea  cast  to 
it  and  held  it  firm,  until  it  multiplied  tenfold. 

The  imagined  danger  to  them  which  the  peasants  had 
believed  to  exist  in  her  had  been  as  a  strong  buckler 
between  the  true  danger  to  her  from  the  defilement  of 
their  companionship  and  example.  They  had  cursed 
her  as  they  had  passed,  and  their  curses  had  been  her 
blessing.  Blinded  and  imprisoned  instincts  had  always 
moved  in  her  to  the  great  and  the  good  things  of  which 
no  man  had  taught  her  in  anywise. 


304  FOLLE-FARINE. 

Left  to  herself,  and  uncontaminated  by  humanity, 
because  proscribed  by  it,  she  had  known  no  teachers  of 
any  sort  save  the  winds  and  the  waters,  the  sun  and  the 
moon,  the  daybreak  and  the  night,  and  these  had  breathed 
into  her  an  unconscious  heroism,  a  changeless  patience,  a 
fearless  freedom,  a  strange  tenderness  and  callousness 
united.  Ignorant  though  she  was,  and  abandoned  to  the 
darkness  of  all  the  superstitions  and  the  sullen  stupor 
amidst  which  her  lot  was  cast,  there  was  yet  that  in  her 
which  led  her  to  veneration  of  the  purpose  of  his  life. 

He  desired  not  happiness  nor  tenderness,  nor  bodily 
ease,  nor  sensual  delight,  but  only  this  one  thing — a  name 
that  should  not  perish  from  among  the  memories  of  men. 

And  this  desire  seemed  to  her  sublime,  divine ;  not 
comprehending  it  she  yet  revered  it.  She,  who  had  seen 
the  souls  of  the  men  around  her  set  on  a  handful  of  copper 
coin,  a  fleece  of  wool,  a  load  of  fruit,  a  petty  pilfering,  a 
small  gain  in  commerce,  saw  the  greatness  of  a  hero's 
sacrifice  in  this  supreme  self-negation  which  was  willing 
to  part  with  every  personal  joy  and  every  physical 
pleasure,  so  that  only  the  works  of  his  hand  might  live, 
and  his  thoughts  be  uttered  in-them  when  his  body  should 
be  destroyed. 

It  is  true  that  the  great  artist  is  as  a  fallen  god  who 
remembers  a  time  when  worlds  arose  at  his  breath,  and 
at  his  bidding  the  barren  lands  blossomed  into  fruitful- 
ness ;  the  sorcery  of  the  thyrsus  is  still  his,  though 
weakened. 

The  powers  of  lost  dominions  haunt  his  memory ;  the 
remembered  glory  of  an  eternal  sun  is  in  his  eyes,  and 
makes  the  light  of  common  day  seem  darkness ;  the 
heart-sickness  of  a  long  exile  weighs  on  him  ;  incessantly 
he  labors  to  overtake  the  mirage  of  a  loveliness  which 
fades  as  he  pursues  it.  In  the  poetic  creation  by  which 
the  bondage  of  his  material  life  is  redeemed,  he  finds  at 
once  ecstasy  and  disgust,  because  he  feels  at  once  his 
strength  and  weakness.  For  him  all  things  of  earth  and 
air,  and  sea  and  cloud,  have  beauty ;  and  to  his  ear  all 
voices  of  the  forest-land  and  water-world  are  audible. 

He  is  as  a  god,  since  he  can  call  into  palpable  shape 
dreams  born  of  impalpable  thought;  as  a  god,  since  he 


FOLLE-FARINE.  305 

has  known  the  truth  divested  of  lies,  and  has  stood  face 
to  face  with  it,  and  been  not  afraid  ;  a  god  thus.  But  a 
cripple  inasmuch  as  his  hand  can  never  fashion  the 
shapes  which  his  vision  beholds  ;  and  alien  because  he 
has  lost  what  he  never  will  find  upon  earth ;  a  beast, 
since  ever  and  again  his  passions  will  drag  hiui  to  wallow 
in  the  filth  of  sensual  indulgence ;  a  slave,  since  often- 
times the  divinity  that  is  in  him  breaks  and  bends  under 
the  devilry  that  also  is  in  him,  and  he  obeys  the  instincts 
of  vileness,  and  when  he  would  fain  bless  the  nations  he 
curses  them. 

Some  vague  perception  of  this  dawned  on  her;  the 
sense  was  in  her  to  feel  the  beauty  of  art,  and  to  be 
awed  by  it  though  she  could  not  have  told  what  it  was, 
nor  why  she  cared  for  it.  And  the  man  who  ministered 
to  it,  who  ruled  it,  and  yet  obeyed  it,  seemed  to  her  en- 
nobled with  a  greatness  that  was  the  grandest  thing  her 
blank  and  bitter  life  had  known*  This  wa3  all  wonderful, 
dreamful,  awful  to  her,  and  yet  in  a  half-savage,  half- 
poetic  way,  she  comprehended  the  one  object  of  his  life, 
and  honored  it  without  doubt  or  question. 

No  day  from  that  time  passed  by  without  her  spending 
the  evening  hours  under  the  roof  of  the  haunted  corn- 
tower. 

She  toiled  all  the  other  hours  through,  from  the  earliest 
time  that  the  first  flush  of  day  lightened  the  starlit  skies; 
did  not  he  toil  too  ?  But  when  the  sun  set  she  claimed 
her  freedom ;  and  her  taskmaster  did  not  dare  to  say  her 
nay. 

A  new  and  wondrous  and  exquisite  life  was  shortly 
opening  to  her;  the  life  of  the  imagination. 

All  these  many  years  since  the  last  song  of  Phratos 
had  died  off  her  ear,  never  again  to  be  heard,  she  had 
spent  with  no  more  culture  and  with  no  more  pleasure 
than  the  mule  had  that  she  led  with  his  load  along  the 
miry  ways  in  the  sharp  winter-time.-  Yet  even  through 
that  utter  neglect,  and  that  torpor  of  thought  and  feeling, 
some  wild  natural  fancy  had  been  awake  in  her,  some 
vague  sense  stir  that  brought  to  her  in  the  rustle  of 
leaves,  in  the  sound  of  waters,  the  curling  breath  of  mists, 
the  white  birth  of  lilies,  in  all  the  notes  and  hues  of  the 

26* 


306  FOLLE-FARINE. 

open-air  world,  a  mystery  and  a  loveliness  that  they  did 
not  bear  for  any  of  those  around  her. 

Now  in  the  words  that  Arslan  cast  to  her — often  as 
idly  and  indifferently  as  a  man  casts  bread  to  frozen  birds 
on  snow,  birds  that  he  pities  and  yet  cares  nothing  for — the 
old  religions,  the  old  beliefs,  became  to  her  living  truths 
and  divine  companions.  The  perplexities  of  the  world 
grew  little  clearer  to  her,  indeed  ;  and  the  miseries  of  the 
animal  creation  no  less  hideous  a  mystery.  The  confusion 
of  all  things  was  in  nowise  clearer  to  her;  even,  it  might 
be,  they  deepened  and  grew  more  entangled.  He  could 
imbue  her  with  neither  credulity  nor  contentment;  for  he 
possessed  neither,  and  despised  both,  as  the  fool's  para- 
dise of  those  who,  having  climbed  a  sand-hill,  fancy  that 
they  have  ascended  Zion. 

The  weariness,  the  unrest,  the  desire,  the  contempt  of 
such  a  mind  as  his  can  furnish  anodynes  neither  to  itself 
nor  any  other.  But  such»possessions  and  consolations — 
and  these  are  limitless — as  the  imagination  can  create, 
he  placed  within  her  reach.  Before  she  had  dreamed — 
dreamed  all  through  the  heaviness  of  toil  and  the  gall  of 
tyranny ;  but  she  had  dreamed  as  a  goatherd  may  upon 
a  mist-swept  hill,  by  the  western  seas,  while  all  the  earth 
is  dark,  and  only  its  dim  fugitive  waking  sounds  steal 
dully  on  the  drowsy  ear.  But  now,  through  the  myths 
and  parables  which  grew  familiar  to  her  ear,  she  dreamed 
almost  as  poets  dream,  bathed  in  the  full  flood  of  a  setting 
sun  on  the  wild  edge  of  the  Campagna;  a  light  in  which 
all  common  things  of  daily  life  grow  glorious,  and  through 
whose  rosy  hues  the  only  sound  that  comes  is  some  rich 
dulcet  bell  that  slowly  swings  in  all  the  majesty  and  mel- 
ody of  prayer. 

The  land  was  no  more  to  her  only  a  hard  and  cruel 
place  of  labor  and  butchery,  in  which  all  creatures  suffered 
and  were  slain.  All  things  rose  to  have  their  story  and 
their  symbol  for  her.;  Nature  remaining  to  her  that  one 
sure  solace  and  immeasurable  mystery  which  she  had 
feebly  felt  it  even  in  her  childhood,  was  brought  closer 
to  her,  and  made  fuller  of  compassion.  All  the  forms 
and  voices  of  the  fair  dead  years  of  the  world  seemed  to 
grow  visible  and  audible  to  her,  with  those  marvelous 


FOLLE-FARINE.  30f 

tales  of  the  old  heroic  age  which  little  by  little  he  un- 
folded to  her. 

In  the  people  around  her,  and  in  their  faiths,  she  had 
no  belief;  she  wanted  a  faith,  and  found  one  in  all  these 
strange  sweet  stories  of  a  perished  time. 

She  had  never  thought  that  there  had  been  any  other 
generation  before  that  which  was  present  on  earth  with 
her ;  any  other  existence  than  this  narrow  and  sordid 
one  which  encircled  her.  That  men  had  lived  who  had 
fashioned  those  aerial  wonders  of  the  tall  cathedral  spires, 
and  stained  those  vivid  hues  in  its  ancient  casements, 
had  been  a  fact  too  remote  to  be  known  to  her,  though  for 
twelve  years  her  eyes  had  gazed  at  them  in  reverence  of 
their  loveliness. 

Through  Arslan  the  exhaustless  annals  of  the  world's 
history  opened  before  her,  the  present  ceased  to  matter 
to  her  in  its  penury  and  pain ;  for  the  treasury-houses  of 
the  golden  past  were  opened  to  her  sight.  Most  of  all 
she  loved  the  myths  of  the  Homeric  and  Hesiodic  ages ; 
and  every  humble  and  homely  thing  became  ennobled  to 
her  and  enriched,  beholding  it  through  the  halo  of  poetry 
and  tradition. 

When  aloft  in  the  red  and  white  apple-blossoms  two 
sparrows  pecked  and  screamed  and  spent  the  pleasant 
summer  hours  above  in  the  flower-scented  air  in  shrill 
dispute  and  sharp  contention,  she  thought  that  she  heard 
in  all  their  noisy  notes,  the  arrogant  voices  of  Alcyone  and 
Cyx.  When  the  wild  hyacinths  made  the  ground  purple 
beneath  the  poplars  and  the  pines,  she  saw  in  them  the 
transformed  loveliness  of  one  who  had  died  in  the  fullness 
of  youth,  at  play  in  a  summer's  noon,  and  died  content 
because  stricken  by  the  hand  of  the  greatest  and  goodliest 
of  all  gods,  the  god  that  loved  him  best.  As  the  cattle, 
with  their  sleek  red  hides  and  curling  horns,  came  through 
the  fogs  of  the  daybreak,  across  the  level  meadows, 
and  through  the  deep  dock-leaves,  they  seemed  to  her  no 
more  the  mere  beasts  of  stall  and  share,  but  even  as  the 
milk-white  herds  that  grazed  of  yore  in  the  blest  pastures 
of  Pieria. 

All  night,  in  the  heart  of  the  orchards,  when  the  song 
of  the  nightingales  rose  on  the  stillness,  it  was  no  longer 


308  FOLLE-FARINE. 

for  her  a  little  brown  bird  that  sang  to  the  budding  fruit 
and  the  closed  daisies,  but  was  the  voice  of  ^don  bewail- 
ing her  son  through  the  ages,  or  the  woe  of  Philomela 
crying  through  the  wilderness.  When  through  the  white 
hard  brilliancy  of  noonday  the  swift  swallow  darted  down 
the  beams  of  light,  she  saw  no  longer  in  it  an  insect-hun- 
ter, a  house-nesting  creature,  but  saw  the  shape  of  Procne, 
slaughter-haunted,  seeking  rest  and  finding  none.  And 
when  she  went  about  her  labors,  hewing  wood,  drawing 
water,  bearing  the  corn  to  the  grindstones,  leading  the 
mules  to  the  mill-stream,  she  ceased  to  despair.  For  she 
had  heard  the  old  glad  story  of  the  children  of  Zeus  who 
dwelt  so  long  within  a  herdsman's  hut,  nameless  and  dis- 
honored, yet  lived  to  go  back  crowned  to  Thebes  and  see 
the  beasts  of  the  desert  and  the  stones  of  the  streets  rise 
up  and  obey  the  magic  of  their  song. 

Arslan  in  his  day  had  given  many  evil  gifts,  but  this 
one  gift  that  he  gave  was  pure  and  full  of  solace:  this 
gift  of  the  beauty  of  the  past.  Imperfect,  obscure,  broken 
in  fragments,  obscured  by  her  own  ignorance,  it  was 
indeed  when  it  reached  her;  yet  it  came  with  a  glory 
that  time  could  not  dim,  and  a  consolation  that  iguorance 
could  not  impair. 


CHAPTER    VI. 


"  What  has  come  to  that  evil  one  ?  She  walks  the 
land  as  though  she  were  a  queen,"  the  people  of  Ypres 
said  to  one  another,  watching  the  creature  they  abhorred 
as  she  went  through  the  town  to  the  river-stair  or  to  the 
market-stall. 

She  seemed  to  them  transfigured. 

A  perpetual  radiance  shone  in  the  dark  depths  of  her 
eyes ;  a  proud  elasticity  replaced  the  old  sullen  defiance 
of  her  carriage :  her  face  had  a  sweet  musing  mystery 
and  dreaminess  on  it;  and  when  she  smiled  he/ smile 
was  soft,  and  sudden,  like  the  smile  of  one  who  bears  fair 
tidings  in  her  heart  unspoken. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  309 

"Even  those  people,  dull  and  plodding  and  taciturn,  ab- 
sorbed in  their  small  trades  or  in  their  continual  field 
labor,  were  struck  by  the  change  in  her,  and  looked  after 
her,  and  listened  in  a  stupid  wonder  to  the  sonorous  songs 
in  an  unknown  tongue  that  rose  so  often  on  her  lips  as 
she  strode  among  the  summer  grasses  or  led  the  laden 
mules  through  the  fords. 

They  saw,  even  with  their  eyes  purblind  from  hate, 
that  she  had  thrown  off  their  yoke,  and  had  escaped  from 
their  narrow  world,  and  was  happy  with  some  rich,  mute, 
nameless  happiness  that  they  could  neither  evade  nor 
understand. 

The  fall  of  evening  always  brought  her  to  him  ;  he  let 
her  come,  finding  a  certain  charm  in  that  savage  temper 
which  grew  so  tame  to  him,  in  that  fierce  courage  which 
to  him  was  so  humble,  in  that  absolute  ignorance  which 
was  yet  so  curiously  blended  with  so  strong  a  power  of 
fancy  and  so  quick  an  instinct  of  beauty.  But  he  let  her 
go  again  with  indifference,  and  never  tried  by  any  word 
to  keep  her  an  hour  later  than  she  chose  to  stay.  She 
was  to  him  like  some  handsome  dangerous  beast  that 
flew  at  all  others  and  crouched  to  him.  He  had  a  certain 
pleasure  in  her  color  and  her  grace ;  in  making  her  great 
eyes  glow,  and  seeing  the  light  of  awakening  intelligence 
break  over  all  her  beautiful,  clouded,  fierce  face. 

As  she  learned,  too,  to  hear  more  often  the  sound  of 
her  own  voice,  and  to  use  a  more  varied  and  copious  lan- 
guage, a  rude  eloquence  came  naturally  to  her  ;  and  when 
her  silence  was  broken  it  was  usually  for  some  terse, 
vivid,  picturesque  utterance  which  had  an  artistic  interest 
for  him.  In  this  simple  and  monotonous  province,  with  its 
tedious  sameness  of  life  and  its  green  arable  country  that 
tired  the  sight  fed  in  youth  on  the  grandeur  of  cloud-reach- 
ing mountains  and  the  tumults  of  ice-tossing  seas,  this 
creature,  so  utterly  unlike  her  kind,  so  golden  with  the  glow 
of  tawny  desert  suns,  and  so  strong  with  the  liberty  and 
the  ferocity  and  the  dormant  passion  and  the  silent  force 
of  some  free  forest  animal,  was  in  a  way  welcome. 

All  things  too  were  so  new  and  strange  to  her;  all 
common  knowledge  was  so  utterly  unknown  to  her;  all 
other  kinds  of  life  were  so  unintelligible  to  her;  and  yet 


310  FOLLE-FARINE. 

with  all  her  ignorance  she  had  so  swift  a  fancy,  so  keen 
an  irony,  so  poetic  an  instinct,  that  it  seemed  to  him 
when  he  spoke  with  her  that  he  talked  with  some  creat- 
ure from  another  planet  than  his  own. 

He  liked  to  make  her  smile;  he  liked  to  make  her 
suffer ;  he  liked  to  inflame,  to  wound,  to  charm,  to  tame 
her ;  he  liked  all  these  without  passion,  rather  with  curi- 
osity than  with  interest,  much  as  he  had  liked  in  the 
season  of  his  boyhood  to  ruffle  the  plumage  of  a  captured 
sea-bird ;  to  see  its  eye  sparkle,  and  then  grow  dull  and 
flash  again  with  pain,  and  then  at  the  last  turn  soft  with 
weary,  wistful  tenderness,  having  been  taught  at  once 
the  misery  of  bondage  and  the  tyranny  of  a  human  love. 

She  was  a  bronzed,  bare-footed,  fleet-limbed  young 
outcast,  he  told  himself,  with  the  scowl  of  an  habitual 
defiance  on  her  straight  brows,  and  the  curl  of  an  un- 
tamable scorn  upon  her  rich  red  lips,  and  a  curious 
sovereignty  and  savageness  in  her  dauntless  carriage ; 
and  yet  there  was  a  certain  nobility  and  melancholy  in 
her  that  made  her  seem  like  one  of  a  great  and  fallen 
race ;  and  in  her  eyes  there  was  a  look  repellant  yet  ap- 
pealing, and  lustrous  with  sleeping  passion,  that  tempted 
him  to  wake  what  slumbered  there. 

But  in  these  early  springtide  days  he  suffered  her  to 
come  and  go  as  she  listed,  without  either  persuasion  or 
forbiddance  on  his  own  part. 

The  impassioned  reverence  which  she  had  for  the 
things  he  had  created  was  only  the  untutored,  unreason- 
ing reverence  of  the  barbarian  or  of  the  peasant ;  but  it 
had  a  sweetness  for  him. 

He  had  been  alone  so  long ;  and  so  long  had  passed 
since  any  cheek  had  flushed  and  any  breast  had  heaved 
under  the  influence  of  any  one  of  those  strange  fancies  and 
noble  stories  which  he  hao*  pictured  on  the  walls  of  his 
lonely  chamber.  He  had  despaired  of  and  despised 
himself;  despised  his  continual  failure,  had  despaired  of 
all  power  to  sway  the  souls  and  gain  the  eyes  of  his 
fellow-men.  It  was  a  little  thing— a  thing  so  little  that 
he  called  himself  a  fool  for  taking  any  count  of  it;  yet, 
the  hot  tears  that  dimmed  the  sight  of  this  young  barba- 
rian who  was  herself  of  no  more  value  than  the  mill-dust 


FOLLE-FARINE.  3 1 1 

that  drifted  on  the  breeze,  the  soft  vague  breathless  awe 
that  stole  upon  her  as  she  gazed  at  the  colorless  shadows 
in  which  his  genius  had  spent  itself, — these  were  sweet  to 
him  with  a  sweetness  that  made  him  ashamed  of  his  own 
weakness. 

She  had  given  the  breath  of  life  back  to  his  body  by 
an  act  of  which  he  was  ignorant ;  and  now  she  gave  back 
the  breath  of  hope  to  his  mind  by  a  worship  which  he 
contemned  even  whilst  he  wa3  glad  of  it. 

Meanwhile  the  foul  tongues  of  her  enemies  rang  with 
loud  glee  over  this  new  shame  which  they  could  cast  at 
her. 

"  She  has  found  a  lover, — oh-ho  ! — that  brown  wicked 
thing  !  A  lover  meet  for  her ; — a  man  who  walks  abroad 
in  the  moonless  nights,  and  plucks  the  mandrake,  and 
worships  the  devil,  and  paints  people  in  their  own  like- 
ness, so  that  as  the  color  dries  the  life  wastes  !" — so  the 
women  screamed  after  her  often  as  she  went ;  she  nothing 
understanding  or  heeding,  but  lost  in  the  dreams  of  her 
own  waking  imagination. 

At  times  such  words  as  these  reached  Claudis  Flamma, 
but  he  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  them :  he  had  the  wisdom  of 
the  world  in  him,  though  he  was  only  an  old  miller  who 
had  never  stirred  ten  leagues  from  his  home;  and  whilst 
the  devil  served  him  well,  he  quarreled  not  with  the 
devil. 

In  a  grim  way,  it  was  a  pleasure  to  him  to  think  that 
the  thing  he  hated  might  be  accursed  body  and  soul :  he 
had  never  cared  either  for  her  body  or  her  soul ;  so  that 
the  first  worked  for  him,  the  last  might  destroy  itself  in 
its  own  darkness : — he  had  never  stretched  a  finger  to 
hold  it  back. 

The  pride  and  the  honesty  and  the  rude  candor  and 
instinctive  purity  of  this  young  life  of  hers  had  been  a 
perpetual  hinderance  and  canker  to  him  :  begotten  of  evil, 
by  all  the  laws  of  justice,  in  evil  she  should  live  and  die. 
So  Flamma  reasoned  ;  and  to  the  sayings  of  his  country- 
side he  gave  a  stony  ear  and  a  stony  glance.  She  never 
once,  after  the  first  day,  breathed  a  word  to  Arslan  of 
the  treatment  that  she  received  at  Ypres.  It  was  not  in 
her  nature  to  complain  ;  and  she  abhorred  even  his  pity. 


3 1 2  FOLLE-FARINE. 

Whatever  she  endured,  she  kept  silence  on  it ;  when  he 
asked  her  how  her  grand  sire  dealt  with  her,  she  always 
answered  him,  "It  is  well  enough  with  me  now."  He 
cared  not  enough  for  her  to  doubt  her. 

And,  in  a  manner,  she  had  learned  how  to  keep  her 
tyrant  at  bay.  He  did  not  dare  to  lay  hands  on  her  now 
that  her  eyes  had  got  that  new  fire,  and  her  voice  that 
stern  serene  contempt.  His  wolf  cub  had  shown  her 
teeth  at  last,  at  the  lash,  and  he  did  not  venture  to  sting 
her  to  revolt  with  too  long  use  of  scourge  and  chain. 

So  she  obtained  more  leisure ;  and  what  she  did  not 
spend  in  Arslau's  tower  she  spent  in  acquiring  another 
art, — she  learned  to  read. 

There  was  an  old  herb-seller  in  the  market-place  who 
was  not  so  harsh  to  her  as  the  others  were,  but  who  had 
now  and  then  for  her  a  rough  kindly  word  out  of  gentleness 
to  the  memory  of  Heine  Flamma.  This  woman  was 
better  educated  than  most,  and  could  even  write  a  little. 

To  her  Folle-Farine  went. 

"  See  here,"  she  said,  "  you  are  feeble,  and  I  am  strong. 
I  know  every  nook  and  corner  in  the  woods.  I  know  a 
hundred  rare  herbs  that  you  never  find.  I  will  bring 
you  a  basketful  of  them  -«'•«  in  each  week  if  you  will 
show  me  how  to  read  !  iose  signs  that  the  people  call 
letters." 

The  old  woman  hesitated.  "  It  were  as  much  as  my 
life  is  worth  to  have  you  seen  with  me.     The  lads  will 

stone  my  window.     Still "     The  wish  for  the  rare 

herbs,  and  the  remembrance  of  the  fatigue  that  would  be 
spared  to  her  rheumatic  body  by  compliance,  prevailed 
over  her  fears.     She  consented. 

Three  times  a  week  Folle-Farine  rose  while  it  was 
still  dark,  and  scoured  the  wooded  lands  and  the  moss- 
green  orchards  and  the  little  brooks  in  the  meadows  in 
search  of  every  herb  that  grew.  She  knew  those  green 
places  which  had  been  her  only  kiugdom  and  her  only 
solace  as  no  one  else  knew  them  ;  and  the  old  dame's 
herb-stall  was  the  envy  and  despair  of  all  the  market- 
place. 

Now  and  then  a  laborer  earlier  than  the  rest,  or  a 
vagrant   sleeping   under  a   hedge-row,   saw   her   going 


FOLLE-FARINE.  313 

through  the  darkness  with  her  green  bundle  on  her  head, 
or  stooping  among  the  watercourses  ankle-deep  in  rushes, 
and  he  crossed  himself  and  went  and  told  how  he  had 
seen  the  Evil  Spirit  of  Ypres  gathering  the  poison-weeds 
that  made  ships  founder,  and  strong  men  droop  and  die, 
and  women  love  unnatural  and  horrible  things,  and  all 
manner  of  woe  and  sickness  overtake  those  she  hated. 

Often,  too,  at  this  lonely  time,  before  the  day  broke, 
she  met  Arslan. 

Xt  was  his  habit  to  be  abroad  when  others  slept: 
studies  of  the  night  and  §h  peculiar  loveliness  entered 
largely  into  many  of  his  paintings  ;  the  beauty  of  water 
rippling  in  the  moonbeam,  of  gray  reeds  blowing  against 
the  first  faint  red  of  dawn,  of  dark  fields  with  sleeping 
cattle  and  folded  sheep,  of  dreamy  pools  made  visible 
by  the  shine  of  their  folded  white  lilies, — these  were  all 
things  he  cared  to  study. 

The  earth  has  always  most  charm,  and  least  pain,  to 
the  poet  or  the  artist  when  men  are  hidden  away  under 
their  roofs.  They  do  not  then  break  its  calm  with  either 
their  mirth  or  their  brutality,  the  vile  and  revolting  coarse- 
ness of  their  works,  only  built  to  blot  it  with  so  much  de- 
formity, is  softened  and  obscured  in  the  purple  breadths 
of  shadow  and  the  dim  tender  gleam  of  stars  ;  and  it  was 
thus  that  Arslan  loved  best  to  move  abroad. 

Sometimes  the  shepherd  going  to  his  flocks,  or  the 
housewife  opening  her  shutter  in  the  wayside  cabin,  or 
the  huckster  driving  early  his  mule  seawards  to  meet 
the  fish  that  the  night-trawlers  had  brought,  saw  them 
together  thus,  and  talked  of  it ;  and  said  that  these  two, 
accursed  of  all  honest  folk,  were  after  some  unholy  work 
— coming  from  the  orgy  of  some  witches'  sabbath,  or 
seeking  some  devil's  root  that  would  give  them  the  treas- 
ured gold  of  misers'  tombs  or  the  power  of  life  and  death. 

For  these  things  are  still  believed  by  many  a  pea-ant's 
hearth,  and  whispered  darkly  as  night  closes  in  and  mo 
wind  rises. 

Wading  in  the  shallow  streams,  with  the  breeze  toss- 
ing her  hair,  and  the  dew  bright  on  her  sheaf  of  herbs, 
Folle-Farine  paid  thus  the  only  wages  she  could  for  learn- 
ing the  art  of  letters. 

27 


314  FOLLE-FARINE. 

The  acquisition  was  hard  and  hateful — a  dull  plodding 
task  that  she  detested ;  and  her  teacher  was  old,  and  ig- 
norant of  all  the  grace  and  the  lore  of  books.  She  could 
only  learn  too  at  odd  snatches  of  time,  with  the  cabin- 
window  barred  up  and  the  light  shut  out,  for  the  old 
peasant  was  fearful  of  gaining  a  bad  name  among  her 
neighbors  if  she  were  seen  in  communion  with  the  wicked 
thing  of  Ypres. 

Still  she,  the  child,  persevered,  and  before  long  pos- 
sessed herself  of  the  rudiments  of  letters,  though  she  had 
only  one  primer  to  learn  fromtthat  belonged  to  the  herb- 
seller — a  rude  old  tattered  pamphlet  recounting  the  life 
and  death  of  Catherine  of  Siena.  It  was  not  that  she 
had^cared  to  read,  for  reading's  sake :  books,  she  heard, 
only  told  the  thoughts  and  the  creeds  of  the  human  race, 
and  she  cared  nothing  to  know  these ;  but  one  day  he 
had  said  to  her,  half  unconsciously,  M  If  only  you  were 
not  so  ignorant!" — and  since  that  day  she  had  set  her- 
self to  clear  away  her  ignorance  little  by  little,  as  she 
would  have  cleared  brushwood  with  her  hatchet. 

It  was  the  sweetest  hour  she  had  ever  known  when 
she  was  able  to  stand  before  him  and  say,  "  The  charac- 
ters that  men  print  are  no  longer  riddles  to  me." 

He  praised  her ;  and  she  was  glad  and  proud. 

It  was  love  that  had  entered  into  her,  but  a  great  and 
noble  love,  full  of  intense  humility,  of  supreme  self-sacri- 
fice ; — a  love  that  unconsciously  led  .her  to  chasten  into 
gentleness  the  fierce  soul  in  her,  and  to  try  and  seek  light 
for  the  darkness  of  her  mind. 

He  saw  the  influence  he  had  on  her,  but  he  was  care- 
less of  it. 

A  gipsy-child  working  for  bread  at  a  little  mill-house 
in  these  Norman  woods, — what  use  would  be  to  her 
beauty  of  thought,  grace  of  fancy,  the  desire  begotten  of 
knowledge,  the  poetry  learned  from  the  past  ?  Still  he 
gave  her  these ;  partly  because  he  pitied  her,  partly  be- 
cause in  his  exhaustion  and  solitude  this  creature,  in  her 
beauty  and  her  submission,  was  welcome  to  him. 

And  yet  he  thought  so  little  of  her,  and  chiefly,  when 
he  thought  of  her,  chose  to  perplex  her  or  to  wound  her, 
that  he  might  see  her  eyes  dilate  in  wondering  amaze,  or 


FOLLE-FARINE.  315 

her  face  quiver  and  flush,  and  then  grow  dark,  with  the 
torment  of  a  mute  and  subdued  pain. 

She  was  a  study  to  him,  as  was  the  scarlet  rose  in  the 
garden-ways,  or  the  purple-breasted  pigeon  in  the  woods  ; 
he  dealt  with  her  as  he  would  have  dealt  with  the  flower 
or  the  bird  if  he  had  wished  to  study  them  more  nearly, 
by  tearing  the  rose  open  at  its  core,  or  casting  a  stone  at 
the  blue-rock  on  the  wing. 

This  was  not  cruelty  in  him ;  it  was  only  habit — 
habit,  and  the  callousness  begotten  by  his  own  continual 
pain. 

The  pain  as  of  a  knife  forever  thrust  into  the  loins,  of 
a  cord  forever  knotted  hard  about  the  temples,  which  is 
the  daily  and  nightly  penalty  of  those  mad  enough  to 
believe  that  they  have  the  force  in  them  to  change  the 
sluggard  appetites  and  the  hungry  cruelties  of  their  kind 
into  a  life  of  high  endeavor  and  divine  desire. 

He  held  that  a  man's  chief  passion  is  his  destiny,  and 
will  shape  his  fate,  rough-hew  his  fate  as  circumstance  or 
as  hazard  may. 

His  chief,  his  sole,  passion  was  a  great  ambition — a 
passion  pure  as  crystal,  since  the  eminence  he  craved 
was  for  his  creations,  not  for  his  name.  Yet  it  had  failed 
to  compel  the  destiny  that  he  had  believed  to  be  his  own  : 
and  yet  every  hour  he  seemed  to  sink  lower  and  lower 
into  oblivion,  further  and  further  from  the  possibility  of 
any  fulfillment  of  his  dreams ;  and  the  wasted  years  of  his 
life  fell  away  one  by  one  into  the  gulf  of  the  past,  vain, 
unheard,  unfruitful,  as  the  frozen  words  on  the  deck  of 
the  ship  of  Pantagruel. 

"  What  is  the  use  V1  he  muttered,  half  aloud,  one  day 
before  his  paintings.  "  What  is  the  use  ?  If  I  die  to- 
morrow they  will  sell  for  so  much  rubbish  to  heat  a 
bakery  store.  It  is  only  a  mad  waste  of  hours — waste 
of  color,  of  canvas,  of  labor.  The  world  has  told  me  so 
many  years.  The  world  always  knows  what  it  wants. 
It  selects  unerringly.  It  must  know  better  than  I  do. 
The  man  is  a  fool,  indeed,  who  presumes  to  be  wiser 
than  all  his  generation.  If  the  world  will  have  nothing 
to  do  with  you,  go  and  hang  yourself — or  if  you  fear  to 
do  that,  dig  a  ditch  as  a  grave  for  a  daily  meal.     Give 


316  FOLLE-FARINE. 

over  dreams.  The  world  knows  what  it  wants,  and  if  it 
wanted  you  would  take  you.  It  has  brazen  lungs  to  shout 
for  what  it  needs  ;  the  lungs  of  a  multitude.  It  is  no  use 
what  your  own  voice  whispers  you  unless  those  great 
lungs  also  shout  before  you,  Hosannah." 

So  he  spoke  to  himself  in  bitterness  of  soul,  standing 
before  his  cartoons  into  which  he  had  thrown  all  the 
genius  there  was  in  him,  and  which  hung  there  unseen 
save  by  the  spider  that  wove  and  the  moth  that  flew  over 
them. 

Folle-Farine,  who  was  that  day  in  his  chamber,  looked 
at  him  with  the  wistful,  far-reaching  comprehension  which 
an  unerring  instinct  taught  her. 

"  Of  a  winter  night,"  she  said,  slowly,  "  I  have  heard 
old  Pitchou  read  aloud  to  Flamma,  and  she  read  of  their 
God,  the  one  they  hang  everywhere  on  the  crosses  here ; 
and  the  story  was  that  the  populace  scourged  and  nailed 
to  death  the  one  whom  they  knew  afterwards,  when  too 
late,  to  have  been  the  great  man  they  looked  for,  and 
that  then  being  bidden  to  make  their  choice  of  one  to 
save,  they  choose  to  ransom  and  honor  a  thief:  one 
cajled  Barabbas.  Is  it  true  ? — if  the  world's  choice  were 
wrong  once,  why  not  twice  ?" 

Arslan  smiled ;  the  smile  she  knew  so  well,  and  which 
had  no  more  warmth  than  the  ice  floes  of  his  native  seas. 

"  Why  not  twice  ?  Why  not  a  thousand  times  ?  A 
thief  has  the  world's  sympathies  always.  It  is  always 
the  Barabbas — the  trickster  in  talent,  the  forger  of  stolen 
wisdom,  the  bravo  of  political  crime,  the  huckster  of 
plundered  thoughts,  the  charlatan  of  false  art,  whom  the 
vox  populi  elects  and  sets  free,  and  sends  on  his  way 
rejoicing.  'Will  ye  have  Christ  or  Barabbas?'  Every 
generation  is  asked  the  same  question,  and  every  genera- 
tion gives  the  same  answer;  and  scourges  the  divinity 
out  of  its  midst,  and  finds  its  idol  in  brute  force  and  low 
greed." 

She  only  dimly  comprehended,  not  well  knowing  why 
her  words  had  thus  roused  him.  She  pondered  awhile, 
then  her  face  cleared. 

"But  the  end?"  she  asked.  "The  dead  God  is  the 
God  of  all  these  people  round  us  now,  and  they  have 


FOLLE-FARINE.  317 

built  great  places  in  his  honor,  and  they  bow  when  they 
pass  his  likeness  in  the  highway  or   the   market-place. 
But  with  Barabbas — what  was  the  end  ?     It  seems  that 
they  loathe  and  despise  him  V 
Arslan  laughed  a  little. 

"  His  end  ?  In  Syria  maybe  the  vultures  picked  his 
bones,  where  they  lay  whitening  on  the  plains — those 
times  were  primitive,  the  world  was  young.  But  in  our 
day  Barabbas  lives  and  dies  in  honor,  and  has  a  tomb 
that  stares  all  men  in  the  face,  setting  forth  his  virtues, 
so  that  all  who  run  may  read.  In  our  day  Barabbas — 
the  Barabbas  of  money  greeds  and  delicate  cunning,  and 
the  theft,  which  has  risen  to  science,  and  the  assassination 
that  destroys  souls  and  not  bodies,  and  the  crime  that 
deals  moral  death  and  not  material  death — our  Barabbas, 
who  is  crowned  Fraud  in  the  place  of  mailed  Force, 
— lives  always  in  purple  and  fine  linen,  and  ends  in  the 
odor  of  sanctity  with  the  prayers  of  priests  over  his 
corpse." 

He  spoke  with  a  certain  fierce  passion  that  rose  in  him 
whenever  he  thought  of  that  world  which  had  rejected 
him,  and  had  accepted  so  many  others,  weaker  in  brain 
and  nerve,  but  stronger  in  one  sense,  because  more  dis- 
honest ;  and  as  he  spoke  he  went  straight  to  a  wall  on 
his  right,  where  a  great  sea  of  gray  paper  was  stretched, 
untouched  and  ready  to  his  hand. 

She  would  have  spoken,  but  he  made  a  motion  to 
silence. 

"  Hush !  be  quiet,"  he  said  to  her,  almost  harshly. 
"I  have  thought  of  something." 

And  he  took  the  charcoal  and  swept  rapidly  with  it 
over  the  dull  blank  surface  till  the  vacancy  glowed  with 
life.  A  thought  had  kindled  in  him  ;  a  vision  had  arisen 
before  him. 

The  scene  around  him  vanished  utterly  from  his  sight. 
The  gray  stone  walls,  the  square  windows  through  which 
the  fading  sunrays  fell ;  the  level  pastures  and  sullen 
streams,  and  pallid  skies  without,  all  faded  away  as 
though  they  had  existed  only  in  a  dream. 

All  the  empty  space  about  him  became  peopled  with 
2t* 


318  FOLLE-FARINE. 

many  human  shapes  that  for  him  had  breath  and  being, 
though  no  other  eye  could  have  beheld  them. 

The  old  Syrian  world  of  eighteen  hundred  years  before 
arose  and  glowed  before  him.  The  things  of  his  own  life 
died  away,  and  in  their  stead  he  saw  the  fierce  flame  of 
Eastern  suns,  the  gleaming  range  of  marble  palaces,  the 
purple  flush  of  pomegranate  flowers,  the  deep  color  of 
Oriental  robes,  the  soft  silver  of  hills  olive-crested,  the 
tumult  of  a  city  at  high  festival. 

And  he  could  not  rest  until  all  he  thus  saw  in  his  vision 
he  had  rendered  as  far  as  his  hand  could  render  it;  and 
what  he  drew  was  this. 

A  great  thirsty,  heated,  seething  crowd ;  a  crowd  that 
had  manhood  and  womanhood,  age  and  infancy,  youths 
and  maidens  within  its  ranks ;  a  crowd  in  whose  faces 
every  animal  lust  and  every  human  passion  were  let 
loose;  a  crowd  on  which  a  noonday  sun  without  shadow 
streamed ;  a  sun  which  parched  and  festered  and  engen- 
dered all  corruption  in  the  land  on  which  it  looked.  This 
crowd  was  in  a  city,  a  city  on  whose  flat  roofs  the  myrtle 
and  the  cystus  bloomed ;  above  whose  gleaming  marble 
walls  the  silver  plumes  of  olives  waved;  upon  whose 
distant  slopes  the  darkling  cedar  groves  rose  straight 
against  the  sky,  and  on  whose  lofty  temple  plates  of  gold 
glistened  against  the  shining  heavens.  This  crowd  had 
scourges,  and  stones,  and  goads  in  their  hands ;  and  in 
the^r  midst  they  had  one  clothed  in  white,  whose  head 
was  thorn-crowned,  and  whose  eyes  were  filled  with  a 
god's  pity  and  a  man's  reproach ;  and  him  they  stoned, 
and  lashed,  and  hooted. 

And  triumphant  in  the  throng,  whose  choice  he  was, 
seated  aloft  upon  men's  shoulders,  with  a  purple  robe 
thrown  on  his  shoulders,  there  sat  a  brawny,  grinning, 
bloated,  jibbering  thing,  with  curled  lips  and  savage  eyes, 
and  satyr's  leer:  the  creature  of  greed  of  lust,  of  ob- 
scenity, of  brutality,  of  avarice,  of  desire.  This  man 
the  people  followed,  rejoicing  exceedingly,  content  in  the 
guide  whom  they  had  chosen,  victorious  in  the  fiend  for 
■whom  they  spurned  a  deity;  crying,  with  wide-open 
throats  and  brazen  lungs, — "Barabbas!" 

There  was  not  a  form  in  all  this  closed-packed  throng 


FOLLE-FARINE.  319 

which  had  not  a  terrible  irony  in  it,  which  was  not  in 
itself  a  symbol  of  some  lust  or  of  some  vice,  for  which 
women  and  men  abjure  the  godhead  in  them. 

One  gorged  drunkard  lay  asleep  with  his  amphora 
broken  beneath  him,  the  stream  of  the  purple  wine  lapped 
eagerly  by  ragged  children. 

A  money-changer  had  left  the  receipt  of  custom,  eager 
to  watch  and  shout,  and  a  thief  clutched  both  hands  full 
of  the  forsaken  coins  and  fled. 

A  miser  had  dropped  a  bag  of  gold,  and  stopped  to 
catch  at  all  the  rolling  pieces,  regardless  in  his  greed  how 
the  crowd  trampled  and  trod  on  him. 

A  mother  chid  and  struck  her  little  brown  curly  child, 
because  he  stretched  his  arms  and  turned  his  face  towards 
the  thorn-crowned  captive. 

A  priest  of  the  temple,  with  a  blood-stained  knife 
thrust  in  his  girdle,  dragged  beside  him,  by  the  throat,  a 
little  tender  lamb  doomed  for  the  sacrifice. 

A  dancing-woman  with  jewels  in  her  ears,  and  half 
naked  to  the  waist,  sounding  the  brazen  cymbals  above 
her  head,  drew  a  score  of  youths  after  her  in  Barabbas' 
train. 

On  one  of  the  flat  roof-tops,  reclining  on  purple  and 
fine  linen,  looking  down  on  the  street  below  from  the 
thick  foliage  of  her  citron  boughs  and  her  red  Syrian 
roses,  was  an  Egyptian  wanton ;  and  leaning  beside  her, 
tossing  golden  apples  into  her  bosom,  was  a  young  centu- 
rion of  the  Roman  guard,  languid  and  laughing,  with  his 
fair  chest  bare  to  the  heat,  and  his  armor  flung  in  a  pile 
beside  him. 

And  thus,  in  like  manner,  every  figure  bore  its  parable; 
whilst  above  all  was  the  hard,  hot,  cruel,  cloudless  sky 
of  blue,  without  one  faintest  mist  to  break  its  horrible 
serenity,  and,  high  in  the  azure  ether  and  against  the  sun, 
an  eagle  and  a  vulture  fought,  locked  close,  and  tearing 
at  each  other's  breasts. 

Six  nights  the  conception  occupied  him — his  days  were 
not  his  own,  he  spent  them  in  a  rough  mechanical  labor 
which  his  strength  executed  while  his  mind  was  far  away 
from  it ;  but  the  nights  were  all  his,  and  at  the  end  of  the 
sixth  night  the  thing  arose,  perfect  as  far  as  his  hand 


320  FOLLS-FARINE. 

could  perfect  it ;  begotten  by  a  chance  and  ignorant  word 
as  have  been  many  of  the  greatest  works  the  world  has 
seen  ; — oaks  sprung  from  the  acorn  that  a  careless  child 
has  let  fall.  • 

When  he  had  finished  it,  his  arm  dropped  to  his  side, 
he  stood  motionless ;  the  red  glow  of  the  dawn  lighting 
the  dreamy  depths  of  his  sleepless  eyes. 

He  knew  that  his  work  was  good. 

The  artist,  for  one  moment  of  ecstasy,  realizes  the  con- 
tent of  a  god  when,  resting  from  his  labors,  he  knows 
that  those  labors  have  borne  their  full  fruit. 

It  is  only  for  a  moment ;  the  greater  the  artist  the  more 
swiftly  will  discontent  and  misgiving  overtake  him,  the 
more  quickly  will  the  feebleness  of  his  execution  disgust 
him  in  comparison  with  the  splendor  of  his  ideal ;  the 
more  surely  will  he — though  the  world  ring  with  ap- 
plause of  him — be  enraged  and  derisive  and  impatient  at 
himself. 

But  while  the  moment  lasts  it  is  a  rapture ;  keen,  pure, 
intense,  surpassing  every  other.  In  it,  fleeting  though  it 
be,  he  is  blessed  with  a  blessing  that  never  falls  on  any 
other  creature.  The  work  of  his  brain  and  of  his  hand 
contents  him, — it  is  the  purest  joy  on  earth. 

Arslan  knew  that  joy  as  he  looked  on  the  vast  imagi- 
nation for  which  he  had  given  up  sleep,  and  absorbed  in 
which  he  had  almost  forgotten  hunger  and  thirst  and  the 
passage  of  time. 

He  had  known  no  rest  until  he  had  embodied  the  shapes 
that  pursued  him.  He  had  scarcely  spoken,  barely  slum- 
bered an  hour ;  tired  out,  consumed  with  restless  fever, 
weak  from  want  of  sleep  and  neglect  of  food  he  had 
worked  on,  and  on,  and  on,  until  the  vision  as  he  had 
beheld  it  lived  there,  recorded  for  the  world  that  denied 
him. 

As  he  looked  on  it  he  felt  his  own  strength,  and  was 
glad ;  he  had  faith  in  himself  though  he  had  faith  in  no 
other  thing ;  he  ceased  to  care  what  other  fate  befell  him, 
so  that  only  this  supreme  power  of  creation  remained 
with  him. 

His  lamp  died  out;  the  bell  of  a  distant  clock  chimed 
the  fourth  hour  of  the  passing  night. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  321 

The  day  broke  in  the  east,  beyond  the  gray  levels  of 
the  fields  and  plains ;  the  dusky  crimson  of  the  dawn  rose 
over  the  cool  dark  skies ,  the  light  of  the  morning  stars 
came  in  and  touched  the  visage  of  his  fettered  Christ;  all 
the  rest  was  in  shadow. 

lie  himself  remained  motionless  before  it.  He  knew 
that  in  it  lay  the  best  achievement,  the  highest  utterance, 
the  truest  parable,  that  the  genius  in  him  had  ever  con- 
ceived and  put  forth  ; — and  he  knew  too  that  he  was  as 
powerless  to  raise  it  to  the  public  sight  of  men  as  though 
he  were  stretched  dead  beneath  it.  He  knew  that  there 
would  be  none  to  heed  whether  it  rotted  there  in  the 
dust,  or  perished  by  moth  or  by  flame,  unless  indeed  some 
illness  should  befall  him,  and  it  should  be  taken  with  the 
rest  to  satisfy  some  petty  debt  of  bread,  or  oil,  or  fuel. 

There,  on  that  wall,  he  had  written,  with  all  the  might 
there  was  in  him,  his  warning  to  the  age  in  which  he 
lived,  his  message  to  future  generations,  his  claims  to 
men's  remembrance  after  death :  and  there  were  none  to 
see,  none  to  read,  none  to  believe.  Great  things,  beauti- 
ful things,  things  of  wisdom,  things  of  grace,  things  ter- 
rible in  their  scorn  and  divine  in  their  majesty,  rose  up 
about  him,  incarnated  by  his  mind  and  his  hand — and 
their  doom  was  to  fade  and  wither  without  leaving  one 
human  mind  the  richer  for  their  story,  one  human  soul 
the  nobler  for  their  meaning. 

To  the  humanity  around „-jiim  they  had  no  value  save 
such  value  of  a  few  coins  as  might  lie  in  them  to  liquidate 
some  miserable  scare  at  the  bakehouse  or  the  oilshop  in 
the  streets  of  the  town. 

A  year  of  labor,  and  the  cartoon  eould  be  transferred 
to  the  permanent  life  of  the  canvas  ;  and  he  was  a  master 
of  color,  and  loved  to  wrestle  with  its  intricacies  as  the 
mariner  struggles  with  the  storm. 

"  But  what  were  the  use  ?"  he  pondered  as  he  stood 
there.  "  What  the  use  to  be  at  pains  to  give  it  its  full 
life  on  canvas?    No  man  will  ever  look  on  it." 

All  labors  of  his  art  were  dear  to  him,  and  none  weari- 
some :  yet  he  doubted  what  it  would  avail  to  commence 
the  perpetuation  of  this  work  on  canvas. 

If  the  world  were  never  to  know  that  it  existed,  it 


322  FOLLE-FARWE. 

would  be  as  well  to  leave  it  there  on  its  gray  sea  of 
paper,  to  be  moved  to  and  fro  with  each  wind  that  blew 
through  the  broken  rafters,  and  to  be  brushed  by  the 
wing  of  the  owl  and  the  flittermouse. 

The  door  softly  unclosed;  he  did  not  hear  it. 

Across  the  chamber  Folle-Farine  stole  noiselessly 

She  had  come  and  gone  thus  a  score  of  times  through 
those  six  nights  of  his  vigil ;  and  he  had  seldom  seen  her, 
never  spoken  to  her ;  now  and  then  she  had  touched  him, 
and  placed  before  him  some  simple  meal  of  herbs  and 
bread,  and  he  had  taken  it  half  unconsciously,  and  drunk 
great  draughts  of  water,  and  turned  back  again  to  his 
work,  not  noticing  that  she  had  brought  to  him  what 
he  sorely  needed,  and  yet  would  not  of  himself  have  re- 
membered. 

She  came  to  him  without  haste  and  without  sound, 
and  stood  before  him  and  looked ; — looked  with  all  her 
soul  in  her  awed  eyes. 

The  dawn  was  brighter  now,  red  and  hazy  with  curious 
faint  gleams  of  radiance  from  the  sun,  that  as  yet  was  not 
risen.  All  the  light  there  was  fell  on  the  crowd  of  Jeru- 
salem. 

One  ray  white  aud  pure  fell  upon  the  bowed  head  of 
the  bound  God. 

She  stood  and  gazed  at  it. 
.  She  had  watched  it  all  grow  gradually  into  being  from 
out  the  chaos  of  dull  spaces  and  confused  lines.  This 
art,  which  could  call  life  from  the  dry  wastes  of  wood 
and  paper,  and  shed  perpetual  light  where  all  was  dark- 
ness, was  even  to  her  an  alchemy  incomprehensible,  im- 
measurable ;  a  thing  not  to  be  criticised  or  questioned, 
but  adored  in  all  its  unscrutable  and  majestic  majesty. 
To  her  it  could  not  have  been  more  marvelous  if  his 
hand  had  changed  the  river-sand  to  gold,  or  his  touch 
wakened  the  dead  cornflowers  to  bloom  afresh  as  living 
asphodels.  But  now  for  once  she  forgot  the  sorcery  of 
the  art  in  the  terror  and  the  pathos  of  the  story  that 
it  told;  now  for  once  she  forgot,  in  the  creation,  its 
creator. 

All  she  saw  was  the  face  of  the  Christ,— the  pale  bent 
face,  in  whose  eyes  three  was  a  patience  so  perfect,  a  pity 


FOLLE-FARINE.  323 

so  infinite,  a  reproach  that  had  no  wrath,  a  scorn  that  had 
no  cruelty. 

She  had  hated  the  Christ  on  the  cross,  because  he  was 
the  God  of  the  people  she  hated,  and  in  whose  name 
they  reviled  her.  But  this  Christ  moved  her  strangely — 
there,  in  the  light,  alone ;  betrayed  and  forsaken  while 
the  crowd  rushed  on,  lauding  Barabbas. 

Ignorant  though  she  was,  the  profound  meanings  of 
the  parable  penetrated  her  with  their  ironies  and  with 
their  woe — the  parable  of  the  genius  rejected  and  the 
thief  exalted. 

She  trembled  and  was  silent ;  and  in  her  eyes  sudden 
tears  swam. 

••  They  have  talked  of  their  God — often — so  often,"  she 
muttered.    "  But  I  never  knew  till  now  what  they  meant. " 

Arslan  turned  and  looked  at  her.  He  had  not  known 
that  she  was  there. 

"Is  it  so?"  he  said,  slowly.  "Well  —  the  world 
refuses  me  fame  ;  but  I  do  not  know  that  the  world  could 
give  me  a  higher  tribute  than  your  admiration." 

"  The  world  ?"  she  echoed,  with  her  eyes  still  fastened 
on  the  head  of  the  Christ  and  the  multitudes  that  flocked 
after  Barabbas  "  The  world  ?  You  care  for  the  world 
— you  ? — who  have  painted  that  ?" 

Arslan  did  not  answer  her :  he  felt  the  rebuke. 

He  haol  drawn  the  picture  in  all  its  deadly  irony,  in  all 
its  pitiless  truth,  only  himself  to  desire  and  strive  for  the 
wine  streams  and  the  painted  harlotry,  and  the  showers 
of  gold,  and  the  false  gods  of  a  worldly  success. 

Was  he  a  renegade  to  his  own  religion  ;  a  skeptic  of 
his  own  teaching? 

It  was  not  for  the  first  time  that  the  dreamy  utterances 
of  this  untrained  and  imperfect  intelligence  had  struck 
home  to  the  imperious  and  mature  intellect  of  the  man 
of  genius. 

He'flung  his  charcoal  away,  and  looked  at  the  sun  as 
it  rose. 

"  Even  I !"  he  answered  her.  "  We,  who  call  ourselves 
poets  or  painters,  can  see  the  truth  and  can  tell  it, — we 
are  prophets  so  far, — but  when  we  come  down  from  our 
Horeb  we  hanker  for  the  flesh-pots  and   the  dancing- 


324  FOLLE-FARINE. 

women,  and  the  bags  of  gold,  like  all  the  rest.  We  are 
no  better  than  those  we  preach  to;  perhaps  we  are  worse. 
Our  eyes  are  set  to  the  light ;  but  our  feet  are  fixed  in  the 
mire." 

She  did  not  hear  him  ;  and  had  she  heard,  would  not 
have  comprehended. 

Her  eyes  were  still  fastened  on  the  Christ,  and  the 
blood  in  her  cheeks  faded  and  glowed  at  every  breath  she 
drew,  and  in  her  eye  there  was  the  wistful,  wondering, 
trustful  reverence  which  shone  in  those  of  the  child,  who, 
breaking  from  his  mother's  arms,  and,  regardless  of  the 
soldier's  stripes,  clung  to  the  feet  of  the  scourged  captive, 
and  there  kneeled  and  prayed. 

Without  looking  at  her,  Arslan  went  out  to  his  daily 
labor  on  the  waters. 

The  sun  had  fully  risen ;  the  day  was  red  and  clear  ; 
the  earth  was  hushed  in  perfect  stillness ;  the  only  sounds 
there  wrere  came  from  the  wings  and  voices  of  innumer- 
able birds. 

"And  yet  I  desire  nothing  fo^  myself,"  he  thought. 
"I  would  lie  down  and  die  to-morrow,  gladly,  did  I 
know  that  they  would  live." 

Yet  he  knew  that  to  desire  a  fame  after  death,  was  as 
idle  as  to  desire  with  a  child's  desire,  the  stars. 

For  the  earth  is  crowded  full  with  clay  gods  and  false 
prophets,  and  fresh  legions  forever  arriving  to.  carry  on 
the  old  strife  for  supremacy  ;  and  if  a  man  pass  unknown 
all  the  time  that  his  voice  is  audible,  and  his  hand  visible, 
through  the  sound  and  smoke  of  the  battle,  he  will  dream 
in  vain  of  any  remembrance  when  the  gates  of  the  grave 
shall  have  closed  on  him  and  shut  him  forever  from  sight. 

When  the  world  was  in  its  youth,  it  had  leisure  to 
garner  its  recollections ;  even  to  pause  and  look  back, 
and  to  see  what  flower  of  a  fair  thought,  what  fruit  of  a 
noble  art,  it  might  have  overlooked  or  left  down-trodden. 

But  now  it  is  so  old,  and  is  so  tired  ;  it  is  purblind  and 
heavy  of  foot;  it  does  not  notice  what  it  destroys;  it 
desires  rest,  and  can  find  none ;  nothing  can  matter 
greatly  to  it;  its  dead  are  so  many  that  it  cannot  count 
them ;  and  being  thus  worn  and  dulled  with  age,  and 
suffocated  under  the  weight  of  its  innumerable  memories, 


FOLLE-FARINE.  325 

it  is  very  slow  to  be  moved,  and  swift — terribly  swift — 
to  forget. 

Why  should  it  not  be  ? 

It  has  known  the  best,  it  has  known  the  worst,  that 
ever  can  befall  it. 

And  the  prayer  which  to  the  heart  of  a  man  seems  so 
freshly  born  from  his  own  desire,  what  is  it  on  the  weary 
ear  of  the  world,  save  the  same  old  old  cry  that  it  has 
heard  through  all  the  ages,  empty  as  the  sound  of  the 
wind,  and  forever — forever  unanswered  1 


CHAPTER  VII. 

One  day,  while  the  year  was  still  young,  though  the 
first  thunder-heats  of  the  early  summer  had  come,  he 
asked  her  to  go  with  him  to  the  sea  ere  the  sun  set. 

"  The  sea  ?"  she  repeated.     "  What  is  that  ?" 

"Is  it  possible  that  you  do  not  know?"  he  asked,  in 
utter  wonder.  "  You  who  have  lived  all  these  years 
within  two  leagues  of  it !" 

"  I  have  heard  often  of  it,"  she  said,  simply  ;  "  but  I 
cannot  tell  what  it  is." 

"  The  man  has  never  yet  lived  who  could  tell — in  fit 
language.  Poseidon  is  the  only  one  of  all  the  old  gods 
of  Hellas  who  still  lives  and  reigns.  We  will  go  to  his 
kingdom.     Sight  is  better  than  speech." 

So  he  took  her  along  the  slow  course  of  the  inland 
water  through  the  osiers  and  the  willows,  down  to  where 
the  slow  river  ripples  would  meet  the  swift  salt  waves. 

It  was  true  what  she  had  said,  that  she  had  never  seen 
the  sea.  Her  errands  had  always  been  to  and  fro  be- 
tween the  mill  and  the  quay  in  the  town,  no  farther ;  she 
had  exchanged  so  little  communion  with  the  people  of 
the  district  that  she  knew  nothing  of  whither  the  barges 
went  that  took  away  the  corn  and  fruit,  nor  whence  the 
big  boats  came  that  brought  the  coals  and  fish ;  when 
she  had  a  little  space  of  leisure  to  herself  she  had  wan- 

28 


326  FOLLE-FARINE. 

dered  indeed,  but  never  so  far  as  the  shore  ;  almost  always 
in  the  woods  and  the  meadows ;  never  where  the  river, 
widening  as  it  ran,  spread  out  between  level  banks  until, 
touching  the  sea,  it  became  a  broad  estuary. 

She  had  heard  speak  of  the  sea,  indeed,  as  of  some 
great  highway  on  which  men  traveled  incessantly  to  and 
fro;  as  of  something  unintelligible,  remote,  belonging  to 
others,  indifferent  and  alien  to  herself. 

When  she  had  thought  of  it  at  all,  she  had  only  thought 
of  it  as  probably  some  wide  canal  black  with  mud  and 
dust  and  edged  by  dull  pathways  slippery  and  toilsome, 
along  which  tired  horses  towed  heavy  burdens  all  day 
long,  that  men  and  women  might  be  thereby  enriched  of 
the  beauty  and  the  mystery.  Of  the  infinite  sweetness 
and  solace  of  the  sea,  she  knew  no  more  than  she  knew 
of  any  loveliness  or  of  any  pity  in  human  nature. 

A  few  leagues  off,  where  the  stream  widened  into  a  bay 
and  was  hemmed  in  by  sand-banks  in  lieu  of  its  flat  green 
pastures,  there  was  a  little  fishing-town,  built  under  the 
great  curve  of  beetling  cliffs,  and  busy  with  all  the  stir 
and  noise  of  mart  and  wharf.  There  the  sea  was  crowded 
with  many  masts  and  ruddy  with  red-brown  canvas ;  and 
the  air  was  full  of  the  salt  scent  of  rotting  sea-weed,  of 
stiff  sails  spread  out  to  dry,  of  great  shoals  of  fish  poured 
out  upon  the  beach,  and  of  dusky  noisome  cabins,  foul 
smelling  and  made  hideous  by  fishwives'  oaths,  and  the 
death-screams  of  scalded  shellfish. 

He  did  not  take  her  thither. 

He  took  her  half  way  down  the  stream  whilst  it  was 
still  sleepily  beautiful  with  pale  gray  willows  and  green 
meadow-land,  and  acres  of  silvery  reeds,  and  here  and 
there  some  quaint  old  steeple  or  some  apple-hidden  roofs 
on  either  side  its  banks.  But  midway  he  left  the  water 
and  stretched  out  across  the  country,  she  beside  him, 
moving  with  that  rapid,  lithe,  and  staglike  ease  of  limbs 
that  have  never  known  restraint. 

Some  few  people  passed  them  on  their  way :  a  child, 
taking  the  cliff-road  to  his  home  under  the  rocks,  with  a 
big  blue  pitcher  in  his  hands;  an  old  man,  who  had  a 
fishing-brig  at  sea  and  toiled  up  there  to  look  for  her, 
with  a  gray  dog  at  his  heels,  and  the  smell  of  salt  water 


FOLLE-FARWE.  32? 

in  his  clothes ;  a  goatherd,  clad  in  rough  skins,  wool  out- 
ward, and  killing  birds  with  stones  as  he  went ;  a  woman, 
with  a  blue  skirt  and  scarlet  hose,  and  a  bundle  of  boughs 
and  brambles  on  her  head,  with  here  and  there  a  stray 
winter  berry  glowing  red  through  the  tender  green  leaf- 
age ;  all  these  looked  askance  at  them,  and  the  goatherd 
muttered  a  curse,  and  the  woman  a  prayer,  and  gave 
them  wide  way  through  the  stunted  furze,  for  they  were 
both  of  them  accursed  in  the  people's  sight. 

"You  find  it  hard  to  live  apart  from  your  kind?"  he 
asked  her  suddenly  as  they  gained  the  fields  where  no 
human  habitation  at  all  was  left,  and  over  which  in  the 
radiance  of  the  still  sunlit  skies  there  hung  the  pale 
crescent  of  a  week-old  moon. 

"  To  live  apart  ?" — she  did  not  understand. 

"  Yes — like  this.  To  have  no  child  smile,  no  woman 
gossip,  no  man  exchange  good-morrow  with  you.  Is  it 
any  sorrow  to  you?" 

Her  eyes  flashed  through  the  darkness  fiercely. 

"  What  does  it  matter  ?  It  is  best  so.  One  is  free. 
One  owes  nothing — not  so  much  as  a  fair  word.  That  is 
well." 

"  I  think  it  is  well — if  one  is  strong  enough  for  it.  It 
wants  strength." 

"lam  strong." 

She  spoke  quietly,  with  the  firm  and  simple  conscious- 
ness of  force,  which  has  as  little  of  vanity  in  it  as  it  has 
of  weakness. 

"  To  live  apart,"  she  said,  after  a  pause,  in  which  he 
had  not  answered.  "I  know  what  you  mean — now.  It 
is  well — it  was  well  with  those  men  you  tell  me  of,  when 
the  world  was  young,  who  left  all  other  men  and  went  to 
live  with  the  watercourse  and  the  wild  dove,  and  the 
rose  and  the  palm,  and  the  great  yellow  desert ;  was  it 
not  well  ?" 

"  So  well  with  them  that  men  worshiped  them  for  it. 
But  there  is  no  such  worship  now.  The  cities  are  the 
kingdom  of  heaven,  not  the  deserts ;  and  he  who  hankers 
for  the  wilderness  is  stoned  in  the  streets  as  a  fool.  And 
how  should  it  be  well  with  you,  who  have  neither  wild 


328  FOLLE-FARINE. 

rose  nor  wild  dove  for  compensation,  but  are  only  beaten 
and  hooted,  and  hated  and  despised  ?" 

Her  eyes  flittered  through  the  darkness,  and  her  voice 
was  hard  and  fierce  as  she  answered  him  : 

"  See  here. — There  is  a  pretty  golden  thing  in  the  west 
road  of  the  town  who  fears  me  horribly,  Yvonne,  the 
pottery  painter's  daughter.  She  says  to  her  father  at 
evening,  f  I  must  go  read  the  offices  to  old  Mother  Margot ;' 
and  he  says,  'Go,  my  daughter ;  piety  and  reverence  of 
age  are  twin  blossoms  on  one  stem  of  a  tree  that  grows 
at  the  right  hand  of  God  in  Paradise.' 

"And  she  goes ;  not  to  Margot,  but  to  a  little  booth 
where  there  is  dancing,  and  singing,  and  brawling,  that 
her  father  has  forbade  her  to  go  near  by  a  league. 

"  There  is  an  old  map  at  the  corner  of  the  market- 
place, Ryno,  the  fruitseller,  who  says  that  I  am  accursed, 
and  spits  out  at  me  as  I  pass.  He  says  to  the  people  as 
they  go  by  his  stall,  '  See  these  peaches,  they  are  smooth 
and  rosy  as  a  child's  cheek ;  sweet  and  firm  ;  not  their 
like  betwixt  this  and  Paris.  I  will  let  you  have  them 
cheap,  so  cheap  ;  I  need  sorely  to  send  money  to  my  sick 
son  in  Africa.'  And  the  people  pay,  greedily  ;  and  when 
the  peaches  are  home  they  see  a  little  black  speck  in  each 
of  them,  and  all  save  their  bloom  is  rottenness. 

11  There  is  a  woman  who  makes  lace  at  the  window  of 
the  house  against  the  fourth  gate ;  Marion  Silvis ;  she  is 
white  and  sleek,  and  blue-eyed  ;  the  priests  honor  her, 
and  she  never  misses  a  mass.  She  has  an  old  blind 
mother  whom  she  leaves  in  her  room.  She  goes  out 
softly  at  nightfall,  and  she  slips  to  a  wineshop  full  of 
soldiers,  and  her  lovers  kiss  her  on  the  mouth.  And  the 
old  mother  sits  moaning  and  hungry  at  home  ;  and  a 
night  ago  she  was  badly  burned,  being  alone.  Now — is 
it  well  or  no  to  be  hated  of  those  people?  If  I  had 
loved  them,  and  they  me,  I  might  have  become  a  liar,  and 
have  thieved,  and  have  let  men  kiss  me,  likewise." 

She  spoke  with  thoughtful  and  fierce  earnestness,  not 
witting  of  the  caustic  in  her  own  words,  meaning  simply 
what  she  said,  and  classing  the  kisses  of  men  as  some 
sort  of  weakness  and  vileness,  like  those  of  a  theft  and  a 
lie ;  as  she  had  come  to  do  out  of  a  curious,  proud,  true 


FOLLE-FARINE.  329 

instinct  that  was  in  her,  and  not  surely  from  the  teaching 
of  any  creature. 

She  in  her  way  loved  the  man  who  walked  beside  her  ; 
but  it  was  a  love  of  which  she  was  wholly  unconscious ; 
a  pity,  a  sorrow,  a  reverence,  a  passion,  a  deification,  all 
combined,  that  had  little  or  nothing  in  common  with  the 
loves  of  human  kind,  and  which  still  left  her  speech  as 
free,  and  her  glance  as  fearless,  with  him  as  with  any 
other. 

He  knew  that;  and  he  did  not  care  to  change  it;  it 
was  singular,  and  gave  her  half  her  charm  of  savageness 
and  innocence  commingled.  He  answered  her  merely, 
with  a  smile  : 

"  You  are  only  a  barbarian ;  how  should  you  under- 
stand that  the  seductions  of  civilization  lie  in  its  multipli- 
cations of  the  forms  of  vice  ?  Men  would  not  bear  its 
yoke  an  hour  if  it  did  not  in  return  facilitate  their  sins. 
You  are  an  outcast  from  it ; — so  you  have  kept  your 
hands  honest  and  your  lips  pure.  You  may  be  right  to 
be  thankful — I  would  not  pretend  to  decide." 

"At  least — I  would  not  be  as  they  are,"  she  answered 
him  with  a  curl  of  the  mouth,  and  a  gleam  in  her  eyes : 
the  pride  of  the  old  nomadic  tribes,  whose  blood  was  in 
her,  asserting  itself  against  the  claimed  superiority  of  the 
tamed  and  hearth-bound  races — blood  that  ran  free  and 
fearless  to  the  measure  of  boundless  winds  and  rushing 
waters  ;  that  made  the  forest  and  the  plain,  the  dawn  and 
the  darkness,  the  flight  of  the  wild  roe  and  the  hiding- 
place  of  the  wood  pigeon,  dearer  than  any  roof-tree, 
sweeter  than  any  nuptial  bed. 

She  had  left  the  old  life  so  long — so  long  that  even  her 
memories  of  it  were  dim  as  dreams,  and  its  language  had 
died  off  her  lips  in  all  save  the  broken  catches  of  her 
songs ;  but  the  impulses  of  it  were  in  her,  vivid  and  in- 
eradicable, and  the  scorn  with  which  the  cowed  and  timid 
races  of  hearth  and  of  homestead  ragarded  her,  she,  the 
daugiiter  of  Taric,  gave  back  to  them  in  tenfold  measure. 

"  I  would  not  be  as  they  are  1"  she  repeated,  her  eyes 
glancing  through  the  sunshine  of  the  cloudless  day. 
"  To  sit  and  spin  ;  to  watch  their  soup-pot  boil ;  to  spend 
their  days  under  a  close  roof;  to  shut  the  stars  out,  and 

28* 


330  FOLLE-FARINE. 

cover  themselves  in  their  beds,"as  swine  do  with  their 
straw  in  the  sty;  to  huddle  all  together  in  thousands, 
fearing  to  do  what  they  will,  lest  the  tongue  of  their 
neighbor  wag  evil  of  it ;  to  cheat  a  little  and  steal  a  little, 
and  lie  always  when  the  false  word  serves  them,  and  to 
mutter  to  themselves,  '  God  will  wash  us  free  of  our  sins,' 
and  then  to  go  and  sin  again  stealthily,  thinking  men  will 
not  see  and  sure  that  their  God  will  give  them  a  quit- 
tance ; — that  is  their  life.     I  would  not  be  as  they  are." 

And  her  spirits  rose,  and  her  earliest  life  in  the  Liebana 
seemed  to  flash  on  her  for  one  moment  clear  and  bright 
through  the  veil  of  the  weary  years,  and  she  walked  erect 
and  swiftly  through  the  gorse,  singing  by  his  side  the 
bold  burden  of  one  of  the  old  sweet  songs. 

And  for  the  first  time  the  thought  passed  over  Arslan: 

"  This  tameless  wild  doe  would  crouch  like  a  spaniel, 
and  be  yoked  as  a  beast  of  burden, — if  I  chose." 

Whether  or  no  he  chose  he  was  not  sure. 

She  was  beautiful  in  her  way ;  barbaric,  dauntless,  in- 
nocent, savage;  he  cared  to  hurt,  to  please,  to  arouse,  to 
study,  to  portray  her;  but  to  seek  love  from  her  he  did 
not  care. 

And  yet  she  was  most  lovely  in  her  own  wild  fashion 
like  a  young  desert  mare,  or  a  seagull  on  the  wing;  and 
he  wondered  to  himself  that  he  cared  for  her  no  more,  as 
he  moved  beside  her  through  the  thickets  of  the  gorse  and 
against  the  strong  wind  blowing  from  the  sea. 

There  was  so  little  passion  left  in  him. 

He  had  tossed  aside  the  hair  of  dead  women  and  por- 
trayed the  limbs  and  the  features  of  living  ones  till  that 
ruthless  pursuit  had  brought  its  own  penalty  with  it ;  and 
the  beauty  of  women  scarcely  moved  him  more  than  did 
the  plumage  of  a  bird  or  the  contour  of  a  marble.  His 
senses  were  drugged,  and  his  heart  was  dead  ;  it  was  well 
that  it  should  be  so,  he  had  taught  himself  to  desire  it ; 
and  yet 

As  they  left  the  cliff-road  for  the  pathless  downs  that 
led  toward  the  summit  of  the  rocks,  they  passed  by  a 
wayside  hut,  red  with  climbing  creepers,  and  all  alone  on 
the  sandy  soil,  like  the  little  nest  of  a  yellowhammer. 

Through  Its  unclosed   shutter   the   light   of  the  sun 


FOLLE-FARINE.  331 

streamed  into  it ;  the  interior  was  visible.  It  was  very 
poor — a  floor  of  mud,  a  couch  of  rushes ;  a  hearth  on 
which  a  few  dry  sticks  were  burning ;  walls  lichen-covered 
and  dropping  moisture.  Before  the  sticks,  kneeling  and 
trying  to  make  them  burn  up  more  brightly  to  warm  the 
one  black  pot  that  hung  above  them,  was  a  poor  peasant 
girl,  and  above  her  leaned  a  man  who  was  her  lover,  a 
fisher  of  the  coast,  as  poor,  as  hardy,  and  as  simple  as 
herself. 

In  the  man's  eye  the  impatience  of  love  was  shining, 
and  as  she  lifted  her  head,  after  breathing  with  all  her 
strength  on  the  smoking  sticks,  he  bent  and  drew  her  in 
his  arms  and  kissed  her  rosy  mouth  and  the  white  lids 
that  drooped  over  her  bright  blue  smiling  northern  eyes. 
She  let  the  fuel  lie  still  to  blaze  or  smoulder  as  it  would, 
and  leaned  her  head  against  him,  and  laughed  softly  at 
his  eagerness.     Arslan  glanced  at  them  as  he  passed. 

"  Poor  brutes  J"  he  muttered.  "  Yet  how  happy  they 
are  !  It  must  be  well  to  be  so  easily  content,  and  to  find 
a  ready-made  fool's  paradise  in  a  woman's  lips." 

Folle-Farine  hearing  him,  paused,  and  looked  also. 
She  trembled  suddenly,  and  walked  on  in  silence. 

A  new  light  broke  on  her,  and  dazzled  her,  and  made 
her  afraid :  this  forest-born  creature,  who  had  never  known 
what  fear  was. 

The  ground  ascended  as  it  stretched  seaward,  but  on 
it  there  were  only  wide  dull  fields  of  colza  or  of  grass 
lying,  sickly  and  burning,  under  the  fire  of  the  late  after- 
noon sun.  The  slope  was  too  gradual  to  break  their 
monotony. 

Above  them  was  the  cloudless  weary  blue  ;  below  them 
was  the  faint  parched  green  :  other  color  there  was  none; 
one  little  dusky  panting  bird  flew  by  pursued  by  a  kite ; 
that  was  the  only  change. 

She  asked  him  no  questions;  she  walked  mutely  and 
patiently  by  his  side;  she  hated  the  dull  heat,  the  color- 
less waste,  the  hard  scorch  of  the  air,  the  dreary  change- 
lessness  of  the  scene.  But  she  did  not  say  so.  He  had 
chosen  to  come  to  them. 

A  league  onward  the  fields  were  merged  into  a  heath, 
uncultivated  and  covered  with  short  prickly  furze  ;  on  the 


332  FOLLE-FARINE. 

brown  earth  between  the  stunted  bushes  a  few  goats 
were  cropping  the  burnt-up  grasses.  Here  the  slope 
grew  sharper,  and  the  earth  seemed  to  rise  up  between 
the  sky  and  them,  steep  and  barren  as  a  house-roof. 

Once  he  asked  her, — 

"Are  you  tired?" 

She  shook  her  head. 

Her  feet  ached,  and  her  heart  throbbed  ;  her  limbs  were 
heavy  like  lead  in  the  heat  and  the  toil.  But  she  did  not 
tell  him  so.  She  would  have  dropped  dead  from -ex- 
haustion rather  than  have  confessed  to  him  any  weak- 
ness. 

He  took  the  denial  as  it  was  given,  and  pressed  onward 
up  the  ascent. 

The  sun  was  slanting  towards  the  west;  the  skies 
seemed  like  brass;  the  air  was  sharp,  yet  scorching  ;  the 
dull  brown  earth  still  rose  up  before  them  like  a  wall ; 
they  climbed  it  slowly  and  painfully,  their  hands  and 
their  teeth  filled  with  its  dust,  that  drifted  in  a  cloud  be- 
fore them.  He  bade  her  close  her  eyes,  and  she  obeyed 
him.  He  stretched  his  arm  out  and  drew  her  after  him 
up  the  ascent  that  was  slippery  from  drought  and  prickly 
from  the  stunted  growth  of  furze. 

On  the  summit  he  stood  still  and  released  her. 

"Now  look." 

She  opened  her  eyes  with  the  startled  half-questioning 
stare  of  one  led  out  from  utter  darkness  into  a  full  and 
sudden  light. 

Then,  with  a  cry,  she  sank  down  on  the  rock,  trem- 
bling, weeping,  laughing,  stretching  out  her  arms  to  the 
new  glory  that  met  her  sight,  dumb  with  its  grandeur, 
delirious  with  its  delight. 

For  what  she  saw  was  the  sea. 

Before  her  dazzled  sight  all  its  beauty  stretched,  the 
blueness  of  the  waters  meeting  the  blueness  of  the  skies  ; 
radiant  with  all  the  marvels  of  its  countless  hues ;  softly 
stirred  by  a  low  wind  that  sighed  across  it ;  bathed  in 
a  glow  of  gold  that  streamed  on  it  from  the  westward; 
rolliug  from  north  to  south  in  slow  sonorous  measure, 
filling  the  silent  air  with  ceaseless  melody.  The  luster  of 
the  sunset  beamed  upon  it ;  the  cool  fresh  smell  of  its 


FOLLE-FARINE.  333 

water  shot  like  new  life  through  all  the  scorch  and  stupor 
of  the  day;  its  white  foam  curled  and  broke  on  the  brown 
curving  rocks  and  wooded  inlets  of  the  shores ;  innumer- 
able birds,  that  gleamed  like  silver,  floated  or  flew  above 
its  surface ;  all  was  still,  still  as  death,  save  only  for  the 
endless  movement  of  those  white  swift  wings  and  the 
susurrus  of  the  waves,  in  which  all  meaner  and  harsher 
sounds  of  earth  seemed  lost  and  hushed  to  slumber  and 
to  silence. 

The  sea  alone  reigned,  as  it  reigned  in  the  sweet  young 
years  of  the  earth  when  men  were  not ;  as,  maybe,  it  will 
be  its  turn  to  reign  again  in  the  years  to  come,  when  men 
and  all  their  works  shall  have  passed  away  and  be  no 
more  seen  nor  any  more  remembered. 

Arslan  watched  her  in  silence. 

He  was  glad  that  it  should  awe  and  move  her  thus. 
The  sea  was  the  only  thing  for  which  he  cared  ;  or  which 
had  any  power  over  him.  In  the  northern  winter  of  his 
youth  he  had  known  the  ocean  in  one  wild  night's  work 
undo  all  tlrat  men  had  done  to  check  and  rule  it,  and 
burst  through  all  the  barriers  that  they  had  raised  against 
it,  and  throw  down  the  stones  of  the  altar  and  quench 
the  fires  of  the  hearth,  and  sweep  through  the  fold  and 
the  byre,  and  flood  the  cradle  of  the  child  and  the  grave 
of  the  grandsire.  He  had  seen  the  storms  wash  away  at 
one  blow  the  corn  harvests  of  years,  and  gather  in  the 
sheep  from  the  hills,  and  take  the  life  of  the  shepherd 
with  the  life  of  the  flock.  He  had  seen  it  claim  lovers 
locked  in  each  other's  arms,  and  toss  the  fair  curls  of  the 
first-born  as  it  tossed  the  ribbon-weeds  of  its  deeps.  And 
he  had  felt  small  pity;  it  had  rather  given  him  a  sense 
of  rejoicing  and  triumph  to  see  the  water  laugh  to  scorn 
those  who  were  so  wise  in  their  own  conceit,  and  bind 
beneath  its  chains  those  who  held  themselves  masters 
over  all  beasts  of  the  field  and  birds  of  the  air. 

Other  men  dreaded  the  sea  and  cursed  it;  but  he  in 
his  way  loved  it  almost  with  passion,  and  could  he  have 
chosen  the  manner  of  his  death  would  have  desired  that 
it  should  be  by  the  sea  and  through  the  sea ;  a  death 
cold  and  serene  and  dreamily  voluptuous;   a  death  on 


334  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

which  no  woman  should  look  and  in  which  no  man 
should  have  share. 

He  watched  her  now  for  some  time  without  speaking. 
When  the  first  paroxysm  of  her  emotion  had  exhausted 
itself,  she  stood  motionless,  her  figure  like  a  statue  of 
bronze  against  the  sun,  her  head  sunk  upon  her  breast, 
her  arms  outstretched  as  though  beseeching  the  wondrous 
brightness  which  she  saw  to  take  her  to  itself  and  make 
her  one  with  it.  Her  whole  attitude  expressed  an  un- 
utterable worship.  She  was  like  one  who  for  the  first 
time  hears  of  God. 

"What  is  it  you  feel?"  he  asked  her  suddenly.  He 
knew  without  asking ;  but  he  had  made  it  his  custom  to 
dissect  all  her  joys  and  sufferings,  with  little  heed  whether 
he  thus  added  to  either. 

At  the  sound  of  his  voice  she  started,  and  a  shiver 
shook  her  as  she  answered  him  slowly,  without  with- 
drawing her  gaze  from  the  waters, — 

"It  has  been  there  always — always — so  near  me?" 

"  Before  the  land,  the  sea  was." 

"  And  I  never  knew !" 

Her  head  drooped  on  her  breast ;  tears  rolled  silently 
down  her  cheeks  ;  her  arms  fell  to  her  sides  ;  she  shivered 
again  and  sighed.  She  knew  all  she  had  lost — this  is  the 
greatest  grief  that  life  holds. 

"  You  never  knew,"  he  made  answer.  "  There  was 
only  a  sand-hill  between  you  and  all  this  glory ;  but  the 
sand-hill  was  enough.  Many  people  never  climb  theirs 
all  their  lives  long." 

The  words  and  their  meaning  escaped  her. 

She  had  for  once  no  remembrance  of  him ;  nor  any 
other  sense  save  of  this  surpassing  wonder  which  had 
thus  burst  on  her — this  miracle  that  had  been  near  her 
for  so  long,  yet  of  which  she  had  never  in  all  her  visions 
dreamed. 

She  was  quite  silent ;  sunk  there  on  her  knees,  motion- 
less, and  gazing  straight,  with  eyes  unblenching,  at  the 
light. 

There  was  no  sound  near  them,  nor  was  there  anything 
in  sight  except  where  above  against  the  deepest  azure  of 
the  sky  two  curlews  were  circling  around  each  other,  and 


FOLLE-FARINE.  335 

in  the  distance  a  single  ship  was  gliding,  with  sails  sil- 
vered by  the  sun.  All  signs  of  human  life  lay  far  behind  ; 
severed  from  them  by  those  steep  scorched  slopes  swept 
only  by  the  plovers  and  the  bees.  And  all  the  while  she 
looked  the  slow  tears  gathered  in  her  eyes  and  fell,  and 
the  loud  hard  beating  of  her  heart  was  audible  in  the 
hushed  stillness  of  the  upper  air. 

He  waited  awhile ;  then  he  spoke  to  her : 

"  Since  it  pains  you  come  away." 

A  great  sob  shuddered  through  her. 

"  Give  me  that  pain,"  she^nuttered,  "  sooner  than  any 
joy.     Pain  ?     Pain  ? — it  is  life,  heaven,  liberty  1" 

For  suddenly  those  words  which  she  had  heard  spoken 
around  her,  and  which  had  been  scarcely  more  to  her 
than  they  were  to  the  deaf  and  the  dumb,  became  real  to 
her  with  a  thousand  meanings.  Men  use  them  uncon- 
sciously, figuring  by  them  all  the  marvels  of  their  exist- 
ence, all  the  agonies  of  their  emotions,  all  the  mysteries 
of  their  pangs  and  passions,  for  which  they  have  no  other 
names  ;  even  so  she  used  them  now  in  the  tumult  of  awe, 
in  the  torture  of  joy,  that  possessed  her. 

Arslan  looked  at  her,  and  let  her  be. 

Passionless  himself,  except  in  the  pursuit  of  his  art, 
the  passions  of  this  untrained  and  intense  nature  had 
interest  for  him — the  cold  interest  of  analysis  and  dissec- 
tion, not  of  sympathy.  As  he  portrayed  her  physical 
beauty  scarcely  moved  by  its  flush  of  .color  and  grace  of 
mould,  so  he  pursued  the  development  of  her  mind 
searchingly,  but  with  little  pity  and  little  tenderness. 

The  seagulls  were  lost  in  the  heights  of  the  air  ;  the 
ship  sailed  on  into  the  light  till  the  last  gleam  of  its  can- 
vas vanished  ;  the  sun  sank  westward  lower  and  lower 
till  it  glowed  in  a  globe  of  flame  upon  the  edge  of  the 
water  :  she  never  moved  ;  standing  there  on  the  summit 
of  the  cliff,  with  her  head  dropped  upon  her  breast,  her 
form  thrown  out  dark  and  motionless  against  the  gold  of 
the  western  sky  ;  on  her  face  still  that  look  of  one  who 
worships  with  intense  honor  and  passionate  faith  an  un- 
known God. 

The  sun  sank  entirely,  leaving  only  a  trail  of  flame 
across  the  heavens;  the  waters  grew  gray  and  purple 


336  FOLLE-FARINE. 

in  the  shadows ;  one  boat,  black  against  the  crimson  re- 
flections of  the  west,  swept  on  swiftly  with  the  in-rush- 
ing tide  ;  the  wind  rose  and  blew  long  curls  of  seaweed  on 
the  rocks  ;  the  shores  of  the  bay  were  dimmed  in  a  heavy 
mist,  through  which  the  lights  of  the  little  hamlets  dimly 
glowed,  and  the  distant  voices  of  fishermen  calling  to 
each  other  as  they  drew  in  their  deep-sea  nets  came  faint 
and  weirdlike. 

Still  she  never  moved  ;  the  sea  at  her  feet  seemed  to 
magnetize  her,  and  draw  her  to  it  with  some  unseen 
power. 

She  started  again  as  Arslan  spoke. 

"  This  is  but  a  land-locked  bay,"  he  said,  with  some  con- 
tempt; he  who  had  seen  the  white  aurora  rise  over  the 
untraversed  ocean  of  an  Arctic  world.  "  And  it  lies  quiet 
enough  there,  like  a  duck-pool,  in  the  twilight.  Tell  me, 
why  does  it  move  you  so  tn 

She  gave  a  heavy  stifled  sigh. 

"  It  looks  so  free.     And  I " 

On  her  there  had  vaguely  come  of  late  the  feeling  that 
she  had  only  exchanged  one  tyranny  for  another ;  that, 
leaving  the  dominion  of  ignorance,  she  had  only  entered 
into  a  slavery  still  sterner  and  more  binding.  In  every 
vein  of  her  body  there  leaped  and  flashed  and  lived  the 
old  free  blood  of  an  ever  lawless,  of  an  often  criminal, 
race,  and  yet,  though  with  its  instincts  of  rebellion  so 
strong  in  her,  moving  her  to  break  all  bonds  and  tear 
off  all  yokes,  she  was  the  slave  of  a  slave — since  she  was 
the  slave  of  love.  This  she  did  not  know ;  but  its  weight 
was  upon  her. 

He  heard  with  a  certain  pity.  He  was  bound  himself 
in  the  chain  of  poverty  and  of  the  world's  forgetful ness, 
and  he  had  not  even  so  much  poor  freedom  as  lies  in  the 
gilded  imprisonment  of  fame. 

"  It  is  not  free,"  was  all  he  answered  her.  "  It  obeys 
the  laws  that  govern  it,  and  cannot  evade  them.  Its 
flux  and  reflux  are  not  liberty,  but  obedience — just  such 
obedience  to  natural  law  as  our  life  shows  when  it  springs 
into  being  and  slowly  wears  itself  out  and  then  perishes 
in  its  human  form  to  live  again  in  the  motes  of  the  air 
and  the  blades  of  the  grass.     There  is  no  such  thing  as 


FOLLE-FARINE.  33t 

liberty  ;  men  have  dreamed  of  it,  but  nature  has  never  ac- 
corded it." 

The  words  passed  coldly  over  her:  with  her  senses 
steeped  in  the  radiance  of  light,  that  divinity  of  calm, 
that  breadth  of  vision,  that  trance  of  awe,  the  chilliness 
and  the  bitterness  of  fact  recoiled  from  off  her  intelligence, 
unabsorbed,  as  the  cold  rain-drops  roll  off  a  rose. 

11  It  is  so  free  !"  she  murmured,  regardless  of  his  words. 
"  If  I  had  only  known — I  would  have  asked  it  to  take  me 
so  long  ago.  To  float  dead  on  it — as  that  bird  floats — it 
would  be  so  quiet  there  and  it  would  not  fling  me  back,  I 
think.     It  would  have  pity." 

Her  voice  was  dreamy  and  gentle.  The  softness  of  an 
indescribable  desire  was  in  it. 

"  Is  it  too  late  ?"  he  said,  with  that  cruelty  which  char- 
acterized all  his  words  to  her.  "  Can  you  have  grown  in 
love  with  life  ?" 

"  You  live,"  she  said,  simply. 

He  was  silent;  the  brief  innocent  words  rebuked  him. 
They  said,  so  clearly  yet  so  unconsciously,  the  influence 
that  his  life  already  had  gained  on  hers,  whilst  hers  was 
to  him  no  more  than  the  brown  seaweed  was  to  the  rock 
on  which  the  waters  tossed  it. 

"Let  us  go  down  !"  he  said,  abruptly,  at  length;  "it 
grows  late." 

With  one  longing  backward  look  she  obeyed  him,  mov- 
ing like  a  creature  in  a  dream,  as  she  went  away,  along 
the  side  of  the  cliff  through  the  shadows,  while  the  goats 
lying  down  for  their  night's  rest  started  and  fled  at  the 
human  footsteps. 


29 


338  FOLLE-FARINE. 


CHAPTER  .VIII. 

She  was  his  absolute  slave  ;  and  he  used  his  influence 
with  little  scruple.  Whatever  he  told  her  she  believed  : 
whatever  he  desired,  she  obeyed. 

With  little  effort  he  persuaded  her  that  to  lend  her 
beauty  to  the  purpose  of  his  art  was  a  sacrifice  pure  and 
supreme  ;  repaid,  it  might  be,  with  immortality,  like  the 
immortality  of  the  Mona  Lisa. 

It  was  ever  painful  and  even  loathsome  to  her  to  give 
her  beauty  to  the  callous  scrutiny  and  to  the  merciless 
imitations  of  art ;  it  stung  the  dignity  and  the  purity 
that  were  inborn  in  this  daughter  of  an  outlawed  people ; 
it  wounded,  and  hurt,  and  humiliated  her.  She  knew 
that  these  things  were  only  done  that  one  day  the  eyes 
of  thousands  and  of  tens  of  thousands  might  gaze  on 
them ;  and  the  knowledge  was  hateful  to  her. 

But  as  she  would  have  borne  wood  or  carried  water  for 
him,  as  she  would  have  denied  her  lips  the  least  morsel 
of  bread  that  his  might  have  fed  thereon,  as  she  would 
have  gone  straight  to  the  river's  edge  at  his  bidding,  and 
have  stood  still  for  the  stream  to  swell  and  the  floods  to 
cover  her,  so  she  obeyed  him,  and  let  him  make  of  her 
what  he  would. 

He  painted  or  sketched  her  in  nearly  every  attitude, 
and  rendered  her  the  center  of  innumerable  stories. 

He  placed  her  form  in  the  crowd  of  dancing-women 
that  followed  after  Barabbas.  He  took  her  for  Perse- 
phone, as  for  Phryne.  He  couched  her  on  the  bleak 
rocks  and  the  sea-sands  on  barren  Tenedos.  He  made 
her  beauty  burn  through  the  purple  vines  and  the  roses 
of  silence  of  the  Yenusberg.  He  drew  her  as  the  fairest 
spirit  fleeing  with  the  autumn  leaves  in  her  streaming 
hair  from  the  pursuit  of  his  own  Storm  God  Othyr.  He 
portrayed  her  as  Daphne,  with  all  her  soft  human  form 
changing  and  merging  into  the  bitter  roots  and  the  poi- 
sonous leaves  of  the  laurel  that  was  the  fruit  of  passion. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  339 

He  drew  her  as  Leonice,  whose  venal  lips  yet,  being 
purified  by  a  perfect  love,  were  sealed  mute  unto  death, 
and  for  love's  sake  spoke  not. 

He  sketched  her  in  a  hundred  shapes  and  for  a  hundred 
stories,  taking  her  wild  deerlike  grace,  and  her  supple 
mountain-bred  strength,  and  her  beauty  which  had  all  the 
richness  and  the  freshness  that  sun  and  wind  and  rain 
and  the  dews  of  the  nights  can  give,  taking  these  as  he 
in  other  years  had  taken  the  bloom  of  the  grape,  the 
blush  of  the  seashell,  the  red  glow  of  the  desert  reed, 
the  fleeting  glory  of  anything  that,  by  its  life  or  by  its 
death,  would  minister  to  his  dreams  or  his  desires. 

Of  all  the  studies  he  made  from  her — he  all  the  while 
cold  to  her  as  any  priest  of  old  to  the  bird  that  he  seethed 
in  its  blood  on  his  altars  of  sacrifice, — those  which  were 
slightest  of  all,  yet  of  all  pleased  him  best,  were  those 
studies  which  were  fullest  of  that  ruthless  and  unsparing 
irony  with  which,  in  every  stroke  of  his  pencil,  he  cut  as 
with  a  knife  into  the  humanity  he  dissected. 

In  the  first,  he  painted  her  in  all  the  warm,  dreaming, 
palpitating  slumber  of  youth,  asleep  in  a  field  of  poppies : 
thousands  of  brilliant  blossoms  were  crushed  under  her 
slender,  pliant,  folded  limbs ;  the  intense  scarlet  of  the 
dream-flowers  burned  everywhere,  above,  beneath,  around 
her  ;  purple  shadow  and  amber  light  contended  for  the 
mastery  upon  her;  her  arms  were  lightly  tossed  above 
her  head ;  her  mouth  smiled  in  her  dreams  ;  over  her  a 
butterfly  flew,  spreading  golden  wings  to  the  sun ;  against 
her  breast  the  great  crimson  cups  of  the  flowers  of  sleep 
curled  and  glowed ;  among  them,  hiding  and  gibbering 
and  glaring  at  her  with  an  elf's  eyes,  was  the  Red  Mouse 
of  the  Brocken — the  one  touch  of  pitiless  irony,  of  un- 
sparing metaphor,  that  stole  like  a  snake  through  the 
hush  and  the  harmony  and  the  innocence  of  repose. 

In  the  second,  there  was  still  the  same  attitude,  the 
same  solitude,  the  same  rest,  but  the  sleep  was  the  sleep 
of  death.  Stretched  on  a  block  of  white  marble,  there 
were  the  same  limbs,  but  livid  and  lifeless,  and  twisted 
in  the  contortions  of  a  last  agony:  there  was  the  same 
loveliness,  but  on  it  the  hues  of  corruption  already  had 
stolen ;  the  face  was  still  turned  upward,  but  the  blank 


340  FOLLE-FARINE. 

eyes  stared  hideously,  and  the  mouth  was  drawn  back 
from  teeth  closely  clinched  ;  upon  the  stone  there  lay  a 
surgeon's  knife  and  a  sculptor's  scalpel ;  between  her  lips 
the  Red  Mouse  sat,  watching,  mouthing,  triumphant. 
All  the  beauty  was  left  still,  but  it  was  left  ghastly,  dis- 
colored, ruined, — ready  for  the  mockery  of  the  clay,  for 
the  violation  of  the  knife, — ready  for  the  feast  of  the  blind 
worm,  for  the  narrow  home  dug  in  darkness  and  in  dust. 

And  these  two  pictures  were  so  alike  and  yet  so  unlike, 
so  true  to  all  the  glory  of  youth,  so  true  to  all  the  ghast- 
liness  of  death,  that  they  were  terrible  ;  they  were  terri- 
ble even  to  the  man  who  drew  them  with  so  unsparing 
and  unfaltering  a  hand. 

Only  to  her  they  were  not  terrible,  because  they 
showed  his  power,  because  they  were  his  will  and  work. 
She  had  no  share  in  the  shudder,  which  even  he  felt,  at 
that  visible  presentiment  of  the  corruption  to  which  her 
beauty  in  its  human  perfection  was  destined  :  since  it 
pleasured  him  to  do  it,  that  was  all  she  cared.  She 
would  have  given  her  beauty  to  the  scourge  of  the  popu- 
lace, or  to  the  fish  of  the  sea,  at  his  bidding. 

She  had  not  asked  him  even  what  the  Red  Mouse 
meant. 

She  was  content  that  he  should  deal  with  her  in  all 
things  as  he  would.  That  such  portrayals  of  her  were 
cruel  she  never  once  thought :  to  her  all  others  had  been 
so  brutal  that  the  cruelties  of  Arslan  seemed  sweet  as  the 
south  wind. 

To  be  for  one  instant  a  thing  in  the  least  wished  for 
and  endeared  was  to  her  a  miracle  so  wonderful  and  so 
undreamt  of,  that  it  made  her  life  sublime  to  her. 

"  Is  that  all  the  devil  has  done  for  you  ?"  "cried  the 
gardener's  wife  from  the  vine-hung  lattice,  leaning  out 
while  the  boat  from  Ypres  went  down  the  water-street 
beneath. 

"  It  were  scarcely  worth  while  to  be  his  offspring  if  he 
deals  you  no  better  gifts  than  that.  He  is  as  niggard  as 
the  saints  are — the  little  mean  beasts!  Do  you  know 
that  the  man  who  paints  you  brings  death,  they  say — 
sooner  or  later — to  every  creature  that  lives  again  for 
him  in  his  art  ?" 


FOLLE-FARINE.  341 

Folle-Farine,  beneath  in  the  dense  brown  shadows  cast 
from  the  timbers  of  the  leaning-  houses,  raised  her  eyes ; 
the  eyes  smiled,  and  yet  they  had  a  look  in  them  that 
chilled  even  the  mocking,  careless,  wanton  temper  of  the 
woman  who  leaned  above  among  the  roses. 

"  I  have  heard  it,"  she  said,  simply,  as  her  oar  broke 
the  shadows. 

"And  you  have  no  fear?" 

"I  have  no  fear." 

The  gardener's  wife  laughed  aloud,  the  silver  pins 
shaking  in  her  yellow  tresses. 

"  Well — the  devil  gives  strength,  no  doubt.  But  I 
will  not  say  much  for  the  devil's  wage.  A  fine  office  he 
sets  you — his  daughter — to  lend  yourself  to  a  painter's 
eyes  like  any  wanton  that  he  could  hire  in  the  market- 
place for  a  drink  of  wine.  If  the  devil  do  no  better  than 
that  for  you — his  own-begotten — I  will  cleave  close  to 
the  saints  and  the  angels  henceforth,  though  they  do  take 
all  the  gems  and  the  gold  and  the  lace  for  their  altars, 
and  bestow  so  little  in  answer." 

The  boat  had  passed  on  with  slow  and  even  measure  ; 
no  words  of  derision  which  they  could  cast  at  her  had 
power  to  move  her  any  more  than  the  fret  of  the  ruffling 
rooks  had  power  to  move  the  cathedral  spires  around 
wThich  they  beat  with  their  wings  the  empty  air. 

The  old  dull  gray  routine  of  perpetual  toil  was  illumined 
and  enriched.  If  any  reviled,  she  heard  not.  If  any 
flung  a  stone  at  her,  she  caught  it  and  dropped  it  safely 
on  the  grass,  and  went  on  with  a  glance  of  pardon. 
When  the  children  ran  after  her  footsteps  bawling  and 
mouthing,  she  turned  and  looked  at  them  with  a  sweet 
dreaming  tenderness  in  her  eyes  that  rebuked  them  and 
held  them  silenced  and  afraid. 

Now,  she  hated  none ;  nor  could  she  envy  any. 

The  women  were  welcome  to  their  little  joys  of  hearth 
and  home ;  they  were  welcome  to  look  for  their  lovers 
across  the  fields  with  smiling  eyes  shaded  from  the  sun, 
or  to  beckon  their  infants  from  the  dusky  orchards  to 
murmur  fond  foolish  words  and  stroke  the  curls  of  flaxen 
down, — she  begrudged  them  nothing:  she,  too,  had  her 

29* 


342  FOLLE-FARINE. 

portion  and  her  treasure  ;  she,  too,  knew  the  unutterable 
and  mystical  sweetness  of  a  human  joy. 

Base  usage  cannot  make  base  a  creature  that  gives 
itself  nobly,  purely,  with  unutterable  and  exhaustless 
love ;  and  whilst  the  people  in  the  country  round  mut- 
tered at  her  for  her  vileness  and  disgrace,  she,  all  un- 
witting and  raised  high  above  the  reach  of  taunt  and  cen- 
sure by  a  deep  speechless  joy  that  rendered  hunger,  and 
labor,  and  pain,  and  brutal  tasks,  and  jibing  glances  in- 
different to  her — nay,  unfelt — went  on  her  daily  ways 
with  a  light  richer  than  the  light  of  the  sun  in  her  eyes, 
and  in  her  step  the  noble  freedom  of  one  who  has  broken 
from  bondage  and  entered  into  a  heritage  of  grace. 

She  was  proud  as  with  the  pride  of  one  selected  for 
some  great  dignity  ;  proud  with  the  pride  that  a  supreme 
devotion  and  a  supreme  ignorance  made  possible  to  her. 
He  was  as  a  god  to  her ;  and  she  had  found  favor  in 
his  sight.  Although  by  all  others  despised,  to  him  she 
was  beautiful ;  a  thing  to  be  desired,  not  abhorred  ;  to  be 
caressed,  not  cursed.  It  seemed  to  her  so  wonderful 
that,  night  and  day,  in  her  heart  she  praised  God  for  it 
— that  dim  unknown  God  of  whom  no  man  had  taught 
her,  but  yet  whom  she  had  vaguely  grown  to  dream  of 
and  to  honor,  and  to  behold  in  the  setting  of  the  sun, 
and  in  the  flush  of  the  clouds,  and  in  the  mysteries  of  the 
starlit  skies. 

Of  shame  to  her  in  it  she  had  no  thought:  a  passion 
strong  as  fire  in  its  force,  pure  as  crystal  in  its  unselfish- 
ness, possessed  her  for  him,  and  laid  her  at  his  feet  to  be 
done  with  as  he  would.  She  would  have  crouched  to 
him  like  a  dog;  she  would  have  worked  for  him  like  a 
slave  ;  she  would  have  killed  herself  if  he  had  bidden  her 
without  a  word  of  resistance  or  a  moan  of  regret.  To 
be  caressed  by  him  one  moment  as  his  hand  in  passing 
caressed  a  flower,  even  though  with  the  next  to  be 
broken  like  the  flower  and  cast  aside  in  a  ditch  to  die, 
was  to  her  the  greatest  glory  life  could  know.  To  be  a 
pleasure  to  him  for  one  hour,  to  see  his  eyes  tell  her  once, 
however  carelessly  or  coldly,  that  she  had  any  beauty 
for  him,  was  to  her  the  sweetest  and  noblest  fate  that 
could  befall  her.     To  him  she  was  no  more  than   the 


FOLLE-FARINE.  343 

cluster  of  grapes  to  the  wayfarer,  who  brushes  their 
bloom  off  and  steals  their  sweetness,  then  casts  them 
down  to  be  trampled  on  by  whosoever  the  next  comer 
be.  But  to  this  creature,  who  had  no  guide  except  her 
instincts  of  passion  and  sacrifice,  who  had  no  guard  ex- 
cept the  pure  scorn  that  had  kept  her  from  the  meanness 
and  coarseness  of  the  vices  around  her,  this  was  unin- 
telligible, unsuspected  ;  and  if  she  had  understood  it,  she 
would  have  accepted  it  mutely,  in  that  abject  humility 
which  had  bent  the  fierce  and  dauntless  temper  in  her  to 
his  will. 

To  be  of  use  to  him, — to  be  held  of  any  worth  to  him, 
— to  have  his  eyes  find  any  loveliness  to  study  in  her, — 
to  be  to  him  only  as  a  flower  that  he  broke  off  its  stem 
to  copy  its  bloom  on  his  canvas  and  then  cast  out  on  the 
land  to  wither  as  it  would, — this,  even  this,  seemed  to 
her  the  noblest  and  highest  fate  to  which  she  could  have 
had  election. 

That  he  only  borrowed  the  color  of  her  cheek  and  the 
outline  of  her  limbs  as  he  had  borrowed  a  thousand  times 
ere  then  the  venal  charms  of  the  dancing-women  of 
taverns  and  play-houses,  and  the  luring  graces  of  the 
wanton  that  strayed  in  the  public  ways,  was  a  knowl- 
edge that  never  touched  her  with  its  indignity.  To  her 
his  art  was  a  religion,  supreme,  passionless,  eternal, 
whose  sacrificial  fires  ennobled  and  consecrated  all  that 
they  consumed. 

"  Though  I  shall  die  as  the  leaf  dies  in  my  body,  yet 
I  shall  live  forever  embalmed  amidst  the  beauty  of  his 
thoughts,"  she  told  herself  perpetually,  and  all  her  life 
became  transfigured. 


344  FOLLE-FARINE. 


CHAPTER  IX 

One  evening  he  met  her  in  the  fields  on  the  same  spot 
where  Marcellin  first  had  seen  her  as  a  child  among  the 
scarlet  blaze  of  the  poppies. 

The  lands  were  all  yellow  with  saffron  and  emerald 
with  the  young  corn ;  she  balanced  on  her  head  a  great 
brass  jar ;  the  red  girdle  glowed  about  her  waist  as  she 
moved  ;  the  wind  stirred  the  folds  of  her  garments  ;  her 
feet  were  buried  in  the  shining  grass ;  clouds  tawny  and 
purple  were  behind  her ;  she  looked  like  some  Moorish 
phantom  seen  in  a  dream  under  a  sky  of  Spain. 

He  paused  and  gazed  at  her  with  eyes  half  content, 
half  cold. 

She  was  of  a  beauty  so  uncommon,  so  strange,  and  all 
that  was  his  for  his  art: — a  great  artist,  whether  in  words, 
in  melody,  or  in  color,  is  always  cruel,  or  at  the  least 
seems  so,  for  all  things  that  live  under  the  sun  are  to  him 
created  only  to  minister  to  his  one  inexorable  passion. 

Art  is  so  vast ;  and  human  life  is  so  little. 

It  is  to  him  only  supremely  just  that  the  insect  of  an 
hour  should  be  sacrificed  to  the  infinite  and  eternal  truth 
which  must  endure  until  the  heavens  themselves  shall 
wither  as  a  scroll  that  is  held  in  a  flame.  It  might  have 
seemed  to  Arslan  base  to  turn  her  ignorance  $nd  submis- 
sion to  his  will,  to  the  gratification  of  his  amorous  pas- 
sions ;  but  to  make  these  serve  the  art  to  which  he  had 
himself  abandoned  every  earthly  good  was  in  his  sight 
justified,  as  the  death  agonies  of  the  youth  whom  they 
decked  with  roses  and  slew  in  sacrifice  to  the  sun  were 
in  the  sight  of  the  Mexican  nation. 

The  youth  whom  the  Mexicans  slew,  on  the  high  hill 
of  the  city,  with  his  face  to  the  west,  was  always  the 
choicest  and  the  noblest  of  all  the  opening  flower  of  their 
manhood :  for  it  was  his  fate  to  be  called  to  enter  into 
the  realms  of  eternal  light,  and  to  dwell  face  to  face  with 
the  unbearable  brightness  without  whose  rays  the  uni- 
verse would  have  perished  frozen  in  perpetual  night. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  345 

So  the  artist,  who  is  true  to  his  art,  regards  every 
human  sacrifice  that  he  renders  up  to  it ;  how  can  he  feel 
pity  for  a  thing  which  perishes  to  feed  a  flame  that  he 
deems  the  life  of  the  world  ? 

The  steel  that  he  draws  out  from  the  severed  heart  of 
his  victim  he  is  ready  to  plunge  into  his  own  vitals:  no 
other  religion  can  vaunt  as  much  of  its  priests. 

"  What  are  you  thinking  of  to-night  ?"  he  asked  her 
where  she  came  through  the  fields  by  the  course  of  a  little 
flower-sown  brook,  fringed  with  tall  bulrushes  and  wav- 
ing willow-stems. 

She  lifted  her  eyelids  with  a  dreamy  and  wistful  regard. 

"I  was  thinking,-— I  wonder  what  the  reed  felt  that 
you  told  me  of, — the  one  reed  that  a  god  chose  from  all 
its  millions  by  the  waterside  and  cut  down  to  make  into 
a  flute." 

"Ah? — you  see  there  are  no  reeds  that  make  music 
nowadays ;  the  reeds  are  only  good  to  lfe  woven  into 
creels  for  the  fruits  and  the  fish  of  the  market." 

"  That  is  not  the  fault  of  the  reeds  ?" 

"  Not  that  I  know  ;  it  is  the  fault  of  men  most  likely 
who  find  the  chink  of  coin  in  barter  sweeter  music  than 
the  song  of  the  syrinx.  But  what  do  you  think  the  reed 
felt  then? — pain  to  be  so  sharply  severed  from  its  fel- 
lows ?" 

"  No — or  the  god  would  not  have  chosen  it." 

"What,  then?" 

A  troubled  sigh  parted  her  lips ;  these  old  fables  were 
fairest  truths  to  her,  and  gave  a  grace  to  every  humblest 
thing  that  the  sun  shone  on,  or  the  waters  begat  from 
their  foam,  or  the  winds  blew  with  their  breath  into  the 
little  life  of  a  day. 

"I  was  trying  to  think.  But  I  cannot  be  sure.  These 
reeds  have  forgotten.  They  have  lost  their  soul.  They 
want  nothing  but  to  feed  among  the  sand  and  the  mud, 
and  grow  in  millions  together,  and  shelter  the  toads  and 
the  newts, — there  is  not  a  note  of  music  in  them  all — 
except  when  the  wind  rises  and  makes  them  sigh,  and 
then  they  remember  that  long — long — ago,  the  breath  of 
a  great  god  was  in  them." 

Arslan  looked  at  her  where  she  stood ;  her  eyes  resting 


346  FOLLE-FARWE. 

on  the  reeds,  and  the  brook  at  her  feet ;  the  crimson  heat 
of  the  evening  all  about  her,  on  the  brazen  amphora,  on 
the  red  girdle  on  her  loins,  on  the  thoughtful  parted  lips, 
on  the  proud  bent  brows  above  which  a  golden  butterfly 
floated  as  above  the  brows  of  Psyche. 

He  smiled ;  the  smile  that  was  so  cold  to  her. 

"  Look :  away  over  the  fields,  there  comes  a  peasant 
with  a  sickle ;  he  comes  to  mow  down  the  reeds  to  make 
a  bed  for  his  cattle.  If  he  heard  you,  he  would  think 
you  mad." 

11  They  have  thought  me  many  things  worse.  What 
matter  ?" 

"  Nothing  at  all ; — that  I  know.  But  you  seem  to  envy 
that  reed — so  long  ago — that  was  chosen  ?" 

"  Who  would  not  ?" 

"Are  you  so  sure  ?  The  life  of  the  reed  was  always 
pleasant; — dancing  there  in  the  light,  playing  with  the 
shadows,  blowing  in  the  winds;  with  the  cool  waters  all 
about  it  all  day  long,  and  the  yellow  daffodils  and  the 
blue  bell-flowers  for  its  brethren." 

"  Nay; — how  do  you  know?" 

Her  voice  was  low,  and  thrilled  with  a  curious  eager 
pain. 

"  How  do  you  know  ?"  she  murmured.  "  Rather  it 
was  born  in  the  sands,  among  the  stones,  of  the  chance 
winds,  of  the  stray  germs, — no  one  asking,  no  one  heed- 
ing, brought  by  a  sunbeam,  spat  out  by  a  toad — no  one 
cariug  where  it  dropped.  Rather, — it  grew  there  by  the 
river,  and  such  millions  of  reeds  grew  with  it,  that  neither 
waters  nor  winds  could  care  for  a  thing  so  common  and 
worthless,  but  the  very  snakes  twisting  in  and  out  de- 
spised it,  and  thrust  the  arrows  of  their  tongues  through 
it  in  scorn.  And  then — I  think  I  see ! — the  great  god 
walked  by  the  edge  of  the  river,  and  he  mused  on  a 
gift  to  give  man,  on  a  joy  that  should  be  a  joy  on  the 
earth  forever ;  and  he  passed  by  the  lily  white  as 
snow,  by  the  thyme  that  fed  the  bees,  by  the  gold 
heart  in  the  arum  flower,  by  the  orange  flame  of  the  tall 
saud-rush,  by  all  the  great  water-blossoms  which  the 
sun  kissed,  and  the  swallows  loved,  and  he  came  to  the 
one  little  reed  pierced  with  the  snakes'  tongues,  and  all 


FOLLE-FARINE.  347 

alone  amidst  millions.  Then  he  took  it  up,  and  cut  it  to 
the  root,  and  killed  it; — killed  it  as  a  reed, — but  breathed 
into  it  a  song  audible  and  beautiful  to  all  the  ears  of  men. 
Was  that  death  to  the  reed  ? — or  life  ?  Would  a  thou- 
sand summers  of  life  by  the  waterside  have  been  worth 
that  one  thrill  of  song  when  a  god  first  spoke  through  it  ?" 

Her  face  lightened  with  a  radiance  to  which  the  pas- 
sion of  her  words  was  pale  and  poor;  the  vibrations  of 
her  voice  grew  sonorous  and  changing  as  the  sounds  of 
music  itself;  her  eyes  beamed  through  unshed  tears  as 
planets  through  the  rain. 

She  spoke  of  the  reed  and  the  god : — she  thought  of 
herself  and  of  him. 

He  was  silent. 

The  reaper  came  nearer  to  them  through  the  rosy  haze 
of  the  evening,  and  cast  a  malignant  eye  upon  them,  and 
bent  his  back  and  drew  the  curve  of  his  hook  through  the 
rushes.  • 

Arslan  watched  the  sweep  of  the  steel. 

"  The  reeds  only  fall  now  for  the  market,"  he  said, 
with  a  smile  that  was  cruel.  "And  the  gods  are  all 
dead — Folle-Farine. " 

She  did  not  understand  ;  but  her  face  lost  its  color,  her 
heart  sunk,  her  lips  closed.  She  went  on,  treading  down 
the  long  coils  of  the  wild  strawberries  and  the  heavy 
grasses  wet  with  the  dew. 

The  glow  from  the  west  died,  a  young  moon  rose,  the 
fields  and  the  skies  grew  dark. 

He  looked,  and  let  her  go  ; — alone. 

In  her,  Hermes,  pitiful  for  once,  had  given  him  a  syrinx 
through  which  all  sweetest  and  noblest  music  might  have 
been  breathed.  But  Hermes,  when  he  gives  such  a  gift, 
leaves  the  mortal  on  whom  he  bestows  it  to  make  or  to 
miss  the  music  as  he  may ;  and  to  Arslan,  his  reed  was 
but  a  reed  as  the  rest  were — a  thing  that  bloomed  for  a 
summer-eve — a  thing  of  the  stagnant  water  and  drifting 
sand — a  thing  that  lived  by  the  breath  of  the  wind — a 
thing  that  a  man  should  cut  down  and  weave  in  a  crown 
for  a  day,  and  then  cast  aside  on  the  stream,  and  neither 
regret  nor  in  any  wise  remember — a  reed  of  the  riyer,  as 
the  rest  were. 


BOOK     V. 


CHAPTER  I. 

"  Only  a  little  gold !"  he  thought,  one  day,  looking  on 
the  cartoon  of  the  Barabbas.  "  As  much  as  I  have  flung 
away  on  a  dancing-woman,  or  the  dancing-woman  on  the 
jewel  for  her  breast.  Only  a  little  gold,  and  I  should  be 
free ;  and  with  me  these." 

The  thought  escaped  him  unawares  in  broken  words, 
one  day,  when  he  thought  himself  alone. 

This  was  a  perpetual  torture  to  him,  this  captivity  and 
penury,  this  aimlessness  and  fruitlessness,  in  which  his 
years  were  drifting,  spent  in  the  dull  bodily  labor  that 
any  brainless  human  brute  could  execute  as  well  as  he, 
consuming  his  days  in  physical  fatigues  that  a  roof  he 
despised  might  cover  him,  and  a  bread  which  was  bitter 
as  gall  to  him  might  be  his  to  eat ;  knowing  all  the  while 
that  the  real  strength  which  he  possessed,  the  real  power 
that  could  give  him  an  empire  amidst  his  fellows,  was 
dying  away  in  him  as  slowly  but  as  surely  as  though  his 
brain  were  feasting  fishes  in  the  river-mud  below. 

So  little  ! — just  a  few  handfuls  of  the  wealth  that  cheats 
and  wantons,  fools  and  panders,  gathered  and  scattered 
so  easily  in  that  world  with  which  he  had  now  no  more 
to  do  than  if  he  were  lying  in  his  grave  ; — and  having 
this,  he  would  be  able  to  compel  the  gaze  of  the  world, 
and  arouse  the  homage  of  its  flinching  fear,  even  if  it  should 
still  continue  to  deny  him  other  victories. 

It  was  not  the  physical  privations  of  poverty  which 
could  daunt   him.     His  boyhood   had   been  spent   in  a 
healthful  and  simple  training,  amidst  a  strong  and  hardy 
mountain-people. 
(343) 


FOLLE-FARINE.  349 

It  was  nothing  to  him  to  make  his  bed  on  straw;  to 
bear  hunger  unblenchingly ;  to  endure  cold  and  heat,  and 
all  the  freaks  and  changes  of  wild  weather. 

In  the  long  nights  of  a  northern  winter  he  bad  fasted 
for  weeks  on  a  salted  fish  and  a  handful  of  meal ;  on  the 
polar  seas  he  had  passed  a  winter  ice-blocked,  with  famine 
kept  at  bay  only  by  the  flesh  of  the  seal,  and  men  dying 
around  him  raving  in  the  madness  of  thirst. 

None  of  the  physical  ills  of  poverty  could  appall  him; 
but  its  imprisonment,  its  helplessness,  the  sense  of  utter 
weakness,  the  impotence  to  rise  and  go  to  other  lands  and 
other  lives,  the  perpetual  narrowness  and  darkness  in 
which  it  compelled  him  to  abide,  all  these  were  horrible 
to  him ;  he  loathed  them  as  a  man  loathes  the  irons  on 
his  wrists,  and  the  stone  vault  of  his  prison-cell. 

"  If  I  had  only  money  !"  he  muttered,  looking  on  his 
Barabbas,  "ever  so  little — ever  so  little  !" 

For  he  knew  that  if  he  had  as  much  gold  as  he  had 
thrown  away  in  earlier  times  to  the  Syrian  beggar  who 
had  sat  to  him  on  his  house-top  at  Damascus,  he  could  go 
to  a  city  and  make  the  work  live  in  color,  and  try  once 
more  to  force  from  men  that  wonder  and  that  fear  which 
are  the  highest  tributes  that  the  multitude  can  give  to  the 
genius  that  arises  amidst  it. 

There  was  no  creature  in  the  chamber  with  him,  except 
the  spiders  that  wove  in  the  darkness  among  the  timbers. 

It  was  only  just  then  dawn.  The  birds  were  singing 
in  the  thickets  of  the  water's  edge;  a  blue  kingfisher 
skimmed  the  air  above  the  rushes,  and  a  dragon-fly  hunted 
insects  over  the  surface  of  the  reeds  by  the  shore  ;  the 
swallows,  that  built  in  the  stones  of  the  tower,  were 
wheeling  to  and  fro,  glad  and  eager  for  the  sun. 

Otherwise  it  was  intensely  silent. 

In  the  breadth  of  shadow  still  cast  across  the  stream 
by  the  walls  of  the  tower,  the  market-boat  of  Ypres  glided 
by,  and  the  soft  splash  of  the  passing  oars  was  a  sound 
too  familiar  to  arouse  him. 

But,  unseen,  Folle-Farine,  resting  one  moment  in  her 
transit  to  look  up  at  that  grim  gray  pile  in  which  her 
paradise  was  shut,  watching  and  listening  with  the  fine- 

30 


350  FOLLE-FARINE. 

strung  senses  of  a  great  love,  heard  through  the  open 
casement  the  muttered  words  which,  out  of  the  bitterness 
of  his  heart,  escaped  his  lips  unconsciously 

She  heard  and  understood. 

Although  a  paradise  to  her,  to  him  it  was  only  a  prison. 

"  It  is  with  him  as  with  the  great  black  eagle  that  they 
keep  in  the  bridge-tower,  in  a  hole  in  the  dark,  with  wings 
cut  close  and  a  stone  tied  to  each  foot,"  she  thought,  as 
she  went  on  her  way  noiselessly  down  with  the  ebb-tide 
on  the  river.     And  she  sorrowed  exqeedingly  for  his  sake. 

She  knew  nothing  of  all  that  he  remembered  in  the 
years  of  his  past — of  all  that  he  had  lost,  whilst  yet 
young,  as  men  should  only  lose  their  joys  in  the  years  of 
their  old  age;  she  knew  nothing  of  the  cities  and  the 
habits  of  the  world — nothing  of  the  world's  pleasures  and 
the  world's  triumphs. 

To  her  it  had  always  seemed  strange  that  he  wanted 
any  other  life  than  this  which  he  possessed.  To  her,  the 
freedom,  the  strength,  the  simplicity  of  it,  seemed  noble, 
and  all  that  the  heart  of  a  man  could  desire  from  fate. 

Going  forth  at  sunrise  to  his  daily  labor  on  the  broad 
golden  sheet  of  the  waters,  down  to  the  sight  and  the 
sound  aud^the  smile  of  the  sea,  and  returning  at  sunset  to 
wander  at  will  through  the  woods  and  the  pastures  in  the 
soft  evening  shadows,  or  to  watch  and  portray  with  the 
turn  of  his  wrist  the  curl  of  each  flower,  the  wonder  of 
every  cloud,  the  smile  in  any  woman's  eyes,  the  gleam 
of  any  moonbeam  through  the  leaves ;  or  to  lie  still  on 
the  grass  or  the  sand  by  the  shore,  and  see  the  armies  of 
the  mists  sweep  by  over  his  head,  and  hearken  to  the 
throb  of  the  nightingale's  voice  through  the  darkness, 
and  mark  the  coolness  of  the  dews  on  the  hollow  of  his 
hand,  and  let  the  night  go  by  in  dreams  of  worlds  beyond 
the  stars ; — such  a  life  as  this  seemed  to  her  beyond  any 
other  beautiful. 

A  life  in  the  air,  on  the  tide,  in  the  light,  in  the  wind, 
in  the  sound  of  salt  waves,  in  the  smell  of  wild  thyme, 
with  no  roof  to  come  between  him  and  the  sky,  with  no 
need  to  cramp  body  and  mind  in  the  cage  of  a  street — a 
life  spent  in  the  dreaming  of  dreams,  and  full  of  vision 
and  thought  as  the  summer  was  full  of  its  blossom  and 


FOLLE-FARINE.  351 

fruits, — it  seemed  to  her  the  life  that  must  needs  be  best 
for  a  man,  since  the  life  that  was  freest,  simplest,  and 
highest.  * 

She  knew  nothing  of  the  lust  of  ambition,  of  the  desire 
of  fame,  of  the  ceaseless  unrest  of  the  mind  which  craves 
the  world's  honor,  and  is  doomed  to  the  world's  neglect; 
of  the  continual  fire  which  burns  in  the  hands  which 
stretch  themselves  in  conscious  strength  to  seize  a  scepter 
and  remain  empty,  only  struck  in  the  palm  by  the  buffets 
of  fools. 

Of  these  she  knew  nothing.  • 

She  had  no  conception  of  them — of  the  weakness  and 
the  force  that, twine  one  in  another  in  such  a  temper  as 
his.  She  was  at  once  above  them  and  beneath  them. 
She  could  not  comprehend  that  he  who  could  so  bitterly 
disdain  the  flesh-pots  and  the  wine-skins  of  the  common 
crowd,  yet  could  stoop  to  care  for  the  crowd's  Hosannas. 

But  yet  this  definite  longing  which  she  overheard  in 
the  words  that  escaped  him  she  could  not  mistake ;  it 
was  a  longing  plain  to  her,  one  that  moved  all  the  dullest 
and  most  brutal  souls  around  her.  All  her  years  through 
she  had  seen  the  greed  of  gold,  or  the  want  of  it,  the 
twin  rulers  of  the  only  little  dominion  that  she  knew. 

Money,  in  her  estimate  of  it,  meant  only  some  little 
sum  of  copper  pieces,  such  as  could  buy  a  hank  of  flax,  a 
load  of  sweet  chestnuts,  a  stack  of  wood,  a  swarm  of 
bees,  a  sack  of  autumn  fruits.  What  in  cities  would  have 
been  penury,  was  deemed  illimitable  riches  in  the  home- 
steads and  cabins  which  had  been  her  only  world. 

"A  little  gold! — a  little  gold!"  she  pondered  cease- 
lessly, as  she  went  on  down  the  current.  She  knew  that 
he  only  craved  it,  not  to  purchase  any  pleasure  for  his 
appetites  or  for  his  vanities,  but  as  the  lever  whereby  he 
would  be  enabled  to  lift  off  him  that  iron  weight  of 
adverse  circumstance  which  held  him  down  in  darkness 
as  the  stones  held  the  caged  eagle. 

"A  little  gold  I"  she  said  to  herself  again  and  again  as 
the  boat  drifted  on  to  the  town,  with  the  scent  of  the 
mulberries,  and  the  herbs',  and  the  baskets  of  roses,  which 
were  its  cargo  for  the  market,  fragrant  on  the  air. 

"A  little  gold  !" 


352  FOLLE-FARINE. 

It  seemed  so  slight  a  thing,  and  the  more  cruel,  because 
so  slight,  to  stand  thus  between  him  and  that  noonday 
splendor  of  faTne  which  he  sought  to  win  in  his  obscurity 
and  indigence,  as  the  blinded  eagle  in  his  den  still  turrted 
his  aching  eyes  by  instinct  to  the  sun.  Her  heart  was 
weary  for  him  as  she  went. 

"What  use  for  the  gods  to  have  given  him  back  life," 
she  thought,  "if  they  must  give  him  thus  with  it  the 
incurable  fever  of  an  endless  desire  ?" 

It  was  a  gift  as  poisoned,  a  granted  prayer  as  vain,  as 
the  immortality*  which  they  had  given  to  Tithonus. 

"A  little  gold,"  he  had  said :  it  seemed  a  thing  almost 
within  her  grasp. 

Had  she  been  again  willing  to  steal  from  Flamma,  she 
could  have  taken  it  as  soon  as  the  worth  of  the  load  she 
carried  should  have  been  paid  to  her;  but  by  a  theft  she 
would  not  serve  Arslan  now.  No  gifts  would  she  give 
him  but  what  should  be  pure  and  worthy  of  his  touch. 
She  pondered  and  pondered,  cleaving  the  waters  with 
dull  regular  measure,  and  gliding  under  the  old  stone 
arches  of  the  bridge  into  the  town. 

When  she  brought  the  boat  back  up  the  stream  at 
noonday,  her  face  had  cleared  ;  her  mouth  smiled ;  she 
rowed  on  swiftly,  with  a  light  sweet  and  glad  in  her 
eyes. 

A  thought  had  come  to  her. 

In  the  market-place  that  day  she  had  heard  two  women 
talk  together,  under  the  shade  of  their  great  red  umbrel- 
las, over  their  heaps  of  garden  produce. 

"  So  thou  hast  bought  the  brindled  calf  after  all !  Thou 
art  in  luck." 

"Ay,  in  luck  indeed,  for  the  boy  to  rout  up  the  old 
pear-tree  and  find  those  queer  coins  beneath  it.  The  tree 
had  stood  there  all  jny  father's  and  grandfather's  time, 
and  longer  too,  for  aught  I  know,  and  no  one  ever 
dreamed  there  was  any  treasure  at  the  root ;  but  he  took 
a  fancy  to  dig  up  the  tree  ;  he  .said  it  looked  like  a  ghost, 
with  its  old  gray  arms,  and  he  wanted  to  plant  a  young 
cherry." 

"  There  must  have  been  a  mass  of  coin  ?" 

"  No, — only  a  few  little  shabby,  bent  pieces.     But  the 


FOLLE-FARINE.  353 

lad  took  them  up  to  the  Prince  Sartorian ;  and  he  is 
always  crazed  about  the  like;  and  he  sent  us  for  them 
quite  a  roll  of  gold,  and  said  that  the  coins  found  were, 
beyond  a  doubt,  of  the  Julian  time — whatever  he  might 
mean  by  that." 

"  Sartorian  will  buy  any  rubbish  of  that  sort.  For  my 
part,  I  thiuk  if  one  buried  a  brass  button  only  long 
enough,  he  would  give  one  a  bank-note  for  it." 

"  They  say  there  are  marble  creatures  of  his  that  cost 
more  than  would  dower  a  thousand  brides,  or  pension  a 
thousand  soldiers.  I  do  not  know  about  that.  My  boy 
did  not  get  far  in  the  palace ;  but  he  said  that  the  hall 
he  waited  in  was  graven  with  gold  and  precious  stones. 
One  picture  he  saw  in  it  was  placed  on  a  golden  altar,  as 
if  it  were  a  god.  To  worship  old  coins,  and  rags  of  can- 
vas, and  idols  of  stone  like  that, — how  vile  it  is!  while 
we  are  glad  to  get  a  nettle-salad  off  the  edge  of  the  road." 

"But  the  coins  gave  thee  the  brindled  calf." 

11  That  was  no  goodness  to  us.  Sartorian  has  a  craze 
for  such  follies." 

Folle-Farine  had  listened,  and,  standing  by  them,  for 
once  spoke : 

"  Who  is  Sartorian  ?     Will  you  tell  me?" 

The  women  were  from  a  far-distant  village,  and  had 
not  the  infinite  horror  of  her  felt  by  those  who  lived  in 
the  near  neighborhood  of  the  mill  of  Ypres. 

"  He  is  a  great  noble,"  they  answered  her,  eyeing  her 
with  suspicion. 

"And  where  is  his  dwelling?" 

"  Near  Rioz.  What  do  the  like  of  you  want  with  the 
like  of  the  Prince  ?" 

She  gave  them  thanks  for  their  answers,  and  turned 
away  in  silence  with  a  glow  at  her  heart. 

"  What  is  that  wicked  one  thinking  of  now,  that  she 
asks  for  such  as  the  Prince  Sartorian  ?"  said  the  women, 
crossing  themselves,  repentant  that  they  had  so  far  for- 
gotten themselves  as  to  hold  any  syllable  of  converse 
with  the  devil's  daughter. 

An  old  man  plucking  birds  near  at  hand  chuckled  low 
in  his  throat : 

"  Maybe  she  knows  that  Sartorian  will  give  yet  more 
30* 


354  FOLLE-FA  RINE. 

gold  for  new  faces  than  for  old  coins;  and — how  hand- 
some she  is,  the  black-browed  witch  !" 

She  had  passed  away  through  the  crowds  of  the  market, 
and  did  not  hear. 

"  I  go  to  Rioz  myself  in  two  days'  time  with  the  mules, " 
she  thought;  and  her  heart  rose,  her  glance  lightened,  she 
moved  through  the  people  with  a  step  so  elastic,  and  a 
face  so  radiant  from  the  flus4i  of  a  new  hope,  that  they 
fell  away  from  her  with  an  emotion  which  for  once  was 
not  wholly  hatred. 

That  night,  when  the  mill-house  was  quiet,  and  the 
moonbeams  fell  through  all  its  small  dim  windows  and 
checkered  all  its  wooden  floors,  she  rose  from  the  loft 
where  she  slept,  and  stole  noiselessly  down  the  steep 
stairway  to  the  chamber  where  the  servant  Pitchou  slept. 

It  was  a  little  dark  chamber,  with  jutting  beams  and 
a  casement  that  was  never  unclosed. 

On  a  nail  hung  the  blue  woolen  skirt  and  the  linen  cap 
of  the  woman's  working-dress.  In  a  corner  was  a  little 
image  of  a  saint  and  a  string  of  leaden  beads. 

On  a  flock  pallet  the  old  wrinkled  creature  slept,  tired 
out  with  the  labor  of  a  long  day's  work  among  the  cab- 
bage-beds and  rows  of  lettuces,  muttering  as  she  slept  of 
the  little  daily  peculations  that  were  the  sweet  sins  of 
her  life  and  of  her  master's. 

She  cared  for  her  soul — cared  very  much,  and  tried  to 
save  it;  but  cheating  was  dear  to  her,  and  cruelty  was 
natural :  she  tricked  the  fatherless  child  in  his  measure 
of  milk  for  the  tenth  of  a  sou,  and  wrung  the  throat  of  the 
bullfinch  as  it  .sang,  lest  he  should  peck  the  tenth  of  a 
cherry. 

Folle-Farine  went  close  to  the  straw  bed  and  laid  her 
hand  on  the  sleeper. 

"  Wake !     I  want  a  word  with  you." 

Pitchou  started,  struggled,  glared  with  wide-open  eyes, 
and  gasped  in  horrible  fear. 

Folle-Farine  put  the  other  hand  on  her  mouth. 

"  Listen  1  The  night  I  was  brought  here  you  stole  the 
sequins  off  my  head.  Give  them  back  to  me  now,  or  I 
will  kill  you  where  you  lie." 

The  grip  of  her  left  hand  on  the  woman's  throat,  and 


FOLLE-FARINE.  355 

the  gleam  of  her  knife  in  the  right,  were  enough,  as  she 
had  counted  they  would  be. 

Old  Pitchou  struggled,  lied,  stammered,  writhed,  strove 
to  scream,  and  swore  her  innocence  of  this  theft  which 
had  waited  eleven  years  to  rise  against  her  to  Mary  and 
her  angels ;  but  in  the  end  she  surrendered,  and  tottered 
on  her  shuddering  limbs,  and  crept  beneath  her  bed,  and 
with  terror  and  misery  brought  forth  from  her  secret  hole 
in  the  rafters  of  the  floor  the  little  chain  of  shaking  sequins. 

It  had  been  of  no  use  to  her  :  she  had  always  thought 
it  of  inestimable  value,  and  could  never  bring  herself  to 
part  from  it,  visiting  it  night  and  day,  and  being  perpet- 
ually tormented  with  the  dread  lest  her  master  should 
discover  and  claim  it. 

Folle-Farine  seized  it  from  her  silently,  and  laughed — 
a  quiet  cold  laugh — at  the  threats  and  imprecations  of 
the  woman  who  had  robbed  her  in  her  infancy. 

"  How  can  you  complain  of  me,  without  telling  also 
of  your  own  old  sin  ?"  she  said,  with  contempt,  as  she 
quitted  the  chamber.  "  Shriek  away  as  you  choose  :  the 
chain  is  mine,  not  yours.  I  was  weak  when  you  stole  it; 
I  am  strong  enough  now.  You  had  best  not  meddle,  or 
you  will  have  the  worst  of  the  reckoning." 

And  she  shut  the  door  on  the  old  woman's  screams  and 
left  her,  knowing  well  that  Pitchou  would  not  dare  to 
summon  her  master. 

It  was  just  daybreak.     All  the  world  was  still  dark. 

She  slipped  the  sequins  in  her  bosom,  and  went  back 
to  her  own  bed  of  hay  in  the  loft. 

There  was  no  sound  in  the  darkness  but  the  faint 
piping  of  young  birds  that  felt  the  coming  of  day  long 
ere  the  grosser  senses  of  humanity  could  have  seen  a 
glimmer  of  light  on  the  black  edge  of  the  eastern  clouds. 

She  sat  on  her  couch  with  the  Moorish  coins  in  her 
hand,  and  gazed  upon  them.  They  were  very  precious 
to  her.  She  had  never  forgotten  or  ceased  to  desire 
them,  though  to  possess  herself  of  them  by  force  had 
never  occurred  to  her  until  that  night.  Their  theft  had 
been  a  wrong  which  she  had  never  pardoned,  yet  she  had 
never  avenged  it  until  now. 


356  FOLLE-FA  RINE. 

As  she  held  them  in  her  hand  for  the  first  time  in  eleven 
years,  a  strong  emotion  came  over  her. 

The  time  when  she  had  worn  them  came  out  suddenly 
in  sharp  relief  from  the  haze  of  her  imperfect  memories. 
All  the  old  forest-life  for  a  moment  revived  for  her. 

The  mists  of  the  mountains,  the  smell  of  the  chestnut- 
woods,  the  curl  of  the  white  smoke  among  the  leaves,  the 
sweet  wild  strains  of  the  music,  the  mad  grace  of  the  old 
Moorish  dances,  the  tramp  through  the  hill-passes,  the 
leap  and  splash  of  the  tumbling  waters, — all  arose  to  her 
for  one  moment  from  the  oblivion  in  which  years  of  toil 
and  exile  had  buried  them. 

The  tears  started  to  her  eyes;  she  kissed  the  little 
glittering  coins,  she  thought  of  Phratos. 

She  had  never  known  his  fate. 

The  gypsy  who  had  been  found  dead  in  the  fields  had 
been  forgotten  by  the  people  before  the  same  snows  which 
had  covered  his  body  had  melted  at  the  first  glimmer  of 
the  wintry  sun. 

Flamma  could  have  told  her  ;  but  he  had  never  spoken 
one  word  in  all  her  life  to  her,  except  in  curt  reprimand 
or  in  cruel  irony. 

All  the  old  memories  had  died  out ;  and  no  wanderers 
of  her  father's  race  had  ever  come  into  the  peaceful  and 
pastoral  district  of  the  northern  seaboard,  where  they 
could  have  gained  no  footing,  and  could  have  made  no 
plunder. 

The  sight  of  the  little  band  of  coins  which  had  danced 
so  often  among  her  curls  under  the  moonlit  leaves  in  the 
Liebana  to  the  leaping  and  tuneful  measures  of  the  viol 
moved  her  to  a  wistful  longing  for  the  smile  and  the 
voice  of  Phratos. 

"I  would  never  part  with  them  for  myself,"  she 
thought;  "I  would  die  of  hunger  first — were  it  only 
myself." 

And  still  she  was  resolved  to  part  with  them ;  to  sell 
her  single  little  treasure — the  sole  gift  of  the  only  creature 
who  had  ever  loved  her,  even  in  the  very  first  hour  that 
she  had  recovered  it. 

The  sequins  were  worth  no  more  than  any  baby's 
woven  crown  of  faded  daisies;  but  to  her,  as  to  the  old 


FOLLE-FARINE.  357 

peasant,  they  seemed,  by  their  golden  glitter,  a  source  of 
wealth  incalculable. 

At  twilight  that  day,  as  she  stood  by  Arslan,  she  spoke 
to  him,  timidly, — 

"  I  go  to  Rioz  with  the  two  mules,  at  daybreak  to- 
morrow, with  flour  for  Flamma.  It  is  a  town  larger  than 
the  one  yonder.  Is  there  anything  I  might  do  there — for 
you  ?" 

"  Do  ?  What  should  you  do  ?"  he  answered  her,  with 
inattention  and  almost  impatience  ;  for  his  heart  was  sore 
with  the  terrible  weariness  of  inaction. 

She  looked  at  him  very  wistfully,  and  her  mouth  parted 
a  little  as  though  to  speak ;  but  his  repulse  chilled  the 
words  that  rose  to  her  lips. 

She  dared  not  say  her  thoughts  to  him,  lest  she  should 
displease  him. 

"  If  it  come  to  naught  he  had  best  not  know,  perhaps," 
she  said  to  herself. 

So  she  kept  silence. 

On  the  morrow,  before  the  sun  was  up,  she  set  out  on 
her  way,  with  the  two  mules,  to  Rioz. 

It  was  a  town  distant  some  five  leagues,  lying  to  the 
southward.  Both  the  mules  were#  heavily  laden  with 
as  many  sacks  as  they  could  carry :  she  could  ride  on 
neither ;  she  walked  between  them  with  a  bridle  held  in 
either  hand. 

The  road  was  not  a  familiar  one  to  her;  she  had  only 
gone  thither  some  twice  or  thrice,  and  she  did  not  find 
the  way  long,  being  full  of  her  own  meditations  and 
hopes,  and  taking  pleasure  in  the  gleam  of  new  waters 
and  the  sight  of  fresh  fields,  and  the  green  simple  loveli- 
ness of  a  pastoral  country  in  late  summer. 

She  met  few  people  ;  a  market-woman  or  two  on  their 
asses,  a  walking  peddler,  a  shepherd,  or  a  swineherd — 
these,  were  all. 

The  day  was  young,  and  none  but  the  country  people 
were  astir.  The  quiet  roads  were  dim  with  mists ;  and 
the  tinkle  of  a  sheep's  bell  was  the  only  sound  in  the 
silence. 

It  was  mid-day  when  she  entered  Rioz;  a  town  stand- 
ing in  a  dell,  surrounded  with  apple-orchards  and  fields 


358  FOLLE-FARINE. 

of  corn  and  colza,  with  a  quaint  old  square  tower  of  the 
thirteenth  century  arising  among  its  roofs,  and  round 
about  it  old  moss-green  ramparts  whereon  the  bramble 
and  the  gorse.grew  wild. 

But  as  the  morning  advanced  the  mists  lifted,  the  sun 
grew  powerful  ;  the  roads  were  straight  and  without 
shadow;  the  mules  stumbled,  footsore;  she  herself  grew 
tired  and  fevered. 

She  led  her  fatigued  and  thirsty  beasts  through  the 
nearest  gateway,  where  a  soldier  sat  smoking,  and  a  girl 
in  a  blue  petticoat  and  a  scarlet  bodice  talked  to  him, 
resting  her  hands  on  her  hips,  and  her  brass  pails  on  the 
ground. 

She  left  the  sacks  of  flour  at  their  destination,  which 
was  a  great  bake-house  in  the  center  of  the  town  ;  stalled 
the  mules  herself  in  a  shed  adjoining  the  little  crazy  wine- 
shop where  Flamma  had  bidden  her  bait  them,  and  with 
her  own  hands  unharnessed,  watered,  and  foddered  them. 

The  wineshop  had  for  sign  a  white  pigeon ;  it  was 
tumble-down,  dusky,  half  covered  with  vines  that  grew 
loose  and  entwined  over  each  other  at  their  own  fancy; 
it  had  a  little  court  in  which  grew  a  great  walnut-tree  ; 
there  was  a  bench  under  the  tree;  the  shelter  of  its 
boughs  was  cool  anof  very  welcome  in  the  full  noon  heat. 
The  old  woman  who  kept  the  place,  wrinkled,  shriveled, 
and  cheery,  bade  her  rest  there,  and  she  would  bring  her 
food  and  drink. 

But  Folle-Farine,  with  one  wistful  glance  at  the  shadow- 
ing branches,  refused,  and  asked  only  the  way  to  the 
house  of  the  Prince  Sartorian. 

The  woman  of  the  cabaret  looked  at  her  sharply,  and 
said,  as  the  market-women  had  said,  "  What  does  the  like 
of  you  want  with  the  Prince  ?" 

"  I  want  to  know  the  way  to  it.  If  you  do  not  tell  it, 
another  will,"  she  answered,  as  she  moved  out  of  the 
little  courtyard. 

The  old  woman  called  after  her  that  it  was  out  by  the 
west  gate,  over  the  hill  through  the  fields  for  more  than 
two  leagues:  if  she  followed  the  wind  of  the  water  west- 
ward, she  could  not  go  amiss. 

"  What  is  that  baggage  wanting  to  do  with  Sartorian  ?" 


FOLLE-FARIKE.  359 

she  muttered,  watching  the  form  of  the  girl  as  it  passed 
up  the  steep  sunshiny  street. 

"  Some  evil,  no  doubt,"  answered  her  assistant,  a  stal- 
wart wench,  who  was  skinning  a  rabbit  in  the  yard. 
"  You  know,  she  sells  bags  of  wind  to  founder  the  ships, 
they  say,  and  the  wicked  herb,  bon  plaisir,  and  the  phil- 
ters that  drive  men  mad.     She  is  as  bad  as  a  cajote." 

Her  old  mistress,  going  within  to  toss  a  fritter  for  one 
of  the  mendicant  friars,  chuckled  grimly  to  herself: 

u  No  one  would  ask  the  road  there  for  any  good ;  that 
is  sure.  No  doubt  she  had  heard  that  Sartorian  is  a 
choice  judge  of  color  and  shape  in  all  the  Arts!" 

Folle-Farine  went  out  by  the  gate,  and  along  the  water 
westward. 

In  a  little  satchel  she  carried  some  half  score  of  oil- 
sketches  that  he  had  given  her,  rich,  graceful  shadowy 
things — girls'  faces,  coils  of  foliage,  river-rushes  in  the 
moonlight,  a  purple  passion-flower  blooming  on  a  gray 
ruin  ;  a  child,  golden-headed  and  bare-limbed,  wading  in" 
brown  waters ; — things  that  had  caught  his  sight  and 
fancy,  and  had  been  transcribed,  and  then  tossed  aside 
with  the  lavish  carelessness  of  genius. 

She  asked  one  or  two  peasants,  whom  she  met,  her 
way ;  they  stared,  and  grumbled,  and  pointed  to  some 
distant  towers  rising  out  of  wooded  slopes, — those  they 
said  were  the  towers  of  the  dwelling  of  Prince  Sartorian. 

One  hen-huckster,  leading  his  ass  to  market  with  a  load 
of  live  poultry,  looked  over  his  shoulder  after  her,  and 
muttered  with  a  grin  to  his  wife : 

"  There  goes  a  handsome  piece  of  porcelain  for  the  old 
man  to  lock  in  his  velvet-lined  cupboards." 

And  the  wife  laughed  in  answer, — 

"  Ay ;  she  will  look  well,  gilded  as  Sartorian  always 
gilds  what  he  buys." 

The  words  came  to  the  ear  of  Folle-Farine  :  she  won- 
dered what  they  could  mean ;  but  she  would  not  turn 
back  to  ask. 

Her  feet  were  weary,  like  her  mules' ;  the  sua  scorched 
her ;  she  felt  feeble,  and  longed  to  lie  down  and  sletp  ; 
but  she  toiled  on  up  the  sharp  ascent  that  rose  in  cliffs  of 
limestone  above  the  valley  where  the  river  ran. 


3  GO  FOLLE-FAR1NE. 

At  last  she  came  to  gates  that  were  like  those  of  the 
cathedral,  all  brazen,  blazoned,  and  full  of  scrolls  and 
shields.  She  pushed  one  open — there  was  no  one  there 
to  say  her  nay,  and  boldly  entered  the  domain  which  they 
guarded. 

At  first  it  seemed  to  be  only  like  the  woods  at  home ; 
the  trees  were  green,  the  grass  long,  the  birds  sang,  the 
rabbits  darted.  But  by-and-by  she  went  farther ;  she 
grew  bewildered  ;  she  was  in  a  world  strange  to  her. 

Trees  she  had  never  seen  rose  like  the  pillars  of  tem- 
ples ;  gorgeous  flowers,  she  had  never  dreamed  of,  played 
in  the  sun  ;  vast  columns  of  water  sprang  aloft  from  the 
mouths  of  golden  dragons  or  the  silver  breasts  of  dolphins  ; 
nude  womeu,  wondrous,  and  white,  and  still,  stood  here 
and  there  amidst  the  leavy  darkness. 

She  paysed  among  it  all,  dazzled,  and  thinking  that  she 
dreamed. 

She  had  never  seen  any  gardens,  save  the  gardens  of 
the  poor. 

A  magnolia-tree  was  above  her ;  she  stooped  her  face  to 
one  of  its  great,  fragrant,  creamy  cups  and  kissed  it  softly. 
A  statue  of  Clytie  was  beside  her;  she  looked  timidly  up 
at  the  musing  face,  and  touched  it,  wondering  why  it  was 
so  very  cold,  and  would  not  move  or  smile. 

A  fountain  flung  up  its  spray  beside  her;  she  leaned 
and  caught  it,  thinking  it  so  much  silver,  and  gazed  at  it 
in  sorrowful  wonder  as  it  changed  to  water  in  her  grasp. 
She  walked  on  like  one  enchanted,  silently,  and  thinking 
that  she  had  strayed  into  some  sorcerer's  kingdom  ;  she 
was  not  afraid,  but  glad.  She  walked  on  for  a  long  while, 
always  among  these  mazes  of  leaves,  these  splendors  of 
blossom,  these  cloud-reaching  waters,  these  marble  forms 
so  motionless  and  thoughtful. 

At  last  she  came  on  the  edge  of  a  great  pool,  fringed 
with  the  bulrush  and  the  lotos,  and  the  white  pampas- 
grass,  and  the  flamelike  flowering  reed,  of  the  East  and 
of  the  West. 

All  around,  the  pool  was  sheltered  with  dark  woods  of 
ceo^ar  and  thickets  of  the  sea-pine.  Beyond  them  stood 
aloof  a  great  pile  that  seemed  to  her  to  blaze  like  gold 
and  silver  in  the  sun.    She  approached  it  through  a  maze 


FOLLE-FARINE.  361 

%f  roses,  and  ascended  a  flight  of  marble  steps,  on  to  a 
terrace.     A  door  stood  open  near.     She  entered  it. 

She  was  intent  on  the  object  of  her  errand,  and  she 
had  no  touch  of  fear  in  her  whole  temper. 

Hall  after  hall,  room  after  room,  opened  to  her  amazed 
vision  ;  an  endless  spectacle  of  marvelous  color  stretched 
before  her  eyes ;  the  wonders  that  are  gathered  together 
by  the  world's  luxury  were  for  the  first  time  in  her  sight; 
she  saw  for  the  first  time  in  her  life  how  the  rich  lived. 

She  moved  forward,  curious,  astonished,  bewildered, 
but  nothing  daunted. 

On  the  velvet  of  the  floors  her  steps  trod  as  firmly  and 
as  freely  as  on  the  moss  of  the  orchard  at  Ypres.  Her 
eyes  glanced  as  gravely  aud  as  fearlessly  over  the  frescoed 
walls,  the  gilded  woods,  the  jeweled  cups,  the  broidered 
hangings,  as  over  the  misty  pastures  where  the  sheep 
were  folded. 

It  was  not  in  the  daughter  of  Taric  to  be  daunted  by 
the  dazzle  of  mere  wealth.  She  walked  through  the 
splendid  and  lonely  rooms  wondering,  indeed,  and  eager 
to  see  more;  but  there  was  no  spell  here  such  as  the 
gardens  had  flung  over  her.  To  the  creature  free  born  in 
the  Liebana  no  life  beneath  a  roof  could  seem  beautiful. 

She  met  no  one. 

At  the  end  of  the  fourth  chamber,  which  she  traversed, 
she  ptiused  before  a  great  picture  in  a  heavy  golden  frame  ; 
it  was  the  seizure  of  Persephone.  She  knew  the  story, 
for  Arslan  had  told  her  of  it. 

She  saw  for  the  first  time  how  the  pictures  that  men 
called  great  were  installed  in  princely  splendor ;  this  was 
the  fate  which  he  wanted  for  his  own. 

A  little  lamp,  burning  perfume  with  a  silvery  smoke, 
stood  before  it :  she  recalled  the  words  of  the  woman  in 
the  market-place ;  in  her  ignorance,  she  thought  the  pic- 
ture was  worshiped  as  a  divinity,  as  the  people  wor- 
shiped the  great  picture  of  the  Virgin  that  they  burned 
incense  before  in  the  cathedral.  She  looked,  with  some- 
thing of  gloomy  contempt  in  her  eyes,  at  the  painting 
which  was  mantled  in  massive  gold,  with  purple  draperies 
opening  to  display  it;  for  it  was  the  chief  masterpiece 
upon  those  walls. 

31 


362  FOLLE-FARINR 

"And  he  cares  for  that!"  she  thought,  with  a  sigh 
half  of  wonder,  half  of  sorrow. 

She  did  not  reason  on  it,  but  it  seemed  to  her  that  his 
works  were  greater  hanging  on  their  bare  walls  where 
the  spiders  wove. 

"  Who  is  '  he'?"  a  voice  asked  behind  her. 

She  turned  and  saw  a  small  aud  feeble  man,  with  keen, 
humorous  eyes,  and  an  elfin  face,  delicate  in  its  form, 
malicious  in  its  meaning. 

She  stood  silent,  regarding  him ;  herself  a  strange 
figure  in  that  lordly  place,  with  her  brown  limbs,  her 
bare  head  and  feet,  her  linen  tunic,  her  red  knotted  girdle. 

"Who  are  you?"  she  asked  him  curtly,  in  counter- 
question. 

The  little  old  man  laughed. 

"  I  have  the  honor  to  be  your  host." 

A  disappointed  astonishment  clouded  ber  face. 

"  You  !  are  you  Sartorian  ?"  she  muttered — "  the  Sar- 
torian  whom  they  call  a  prince  ?" 

"Even  II"  he  said  with  a  smile.  "I  regret  that  I 
please  you  no  more.  May  I  ask  to  what  I  am  indebted 
for  your  presence  ?     You  seem  a  fastidious  critic." 

He  spoke  with  good-humored  irony,  taking  snuff  whilst 
he  looked  at  the  lustrous  beauty  of  this  barefooted  gypsy, 
as  he  thought  her,  whom  he  had  found  thus  astray  in  his 
magnificent  chambers. 

She  amused  him  j  finding  her  silent,  he  sought  to  make 
her  speak. 

"  How  did  you  come  in  hither  ?  You  care  for  pictures, 
perhaps,  since  you  seem  to  feed  on  them  like  some  wood- 
pigeons  on  a  sheaf  of  corn  ?" 

"I  know  of  finer  than  yours,"  she  answered  him 
coldly,  chilled  by  the  amused  and  malicious  ridicule  of 
his  tone  into  a  sullen  repose.  "  I  did  not  come  to  see 
anything  you  have.  I  came  to  sell  you  these  :  they  say 
in  Ypres  that  you  care  for  such  bits  of  coin." 

She  drew  out  of  her  bosom  her  string  of  sequins,  and 
tendered  them  to  him. 

He  took  them,  seeing  at  a  glance  that  they  were  of  no 
sort  of  value ;  such  things  as  he  could  buy  for  a  few 


FOLLE-FARINE.  363 

coins  in  any  bazaar  of  Africa  or  Asia.  But  he  did  not 
say  so. 

He  looked  at  her  keenly,  as  he  asked  : 

"  Whose  were  these  ?" 

She  looked  in  return  at  him  with  haughty  defiance. 

"  They  are  mine.  If  you  want  such  things,  as  they 
sav  you  do,  take  them  and  give  me  their  value — that  is 
alf." 

"  Do  you  come  here  to  sell  them  ?" 

"  Yes.  I  came  three  leagues  to-day.  I  heard  a  woman 
from  near  Rioz  say  that  you  liked  such  things.  Take 
them,  or  leave  them." 

"  Who  gave  them  to  you?" 

"  Phratos." 

Her  voice  lingered  sadly  over  the  word.  She  still 
loved  the  memory  of  Phratos. 

"  And  who  may  Phratos  be  ?" 

Her  eyes  flashed  fire  at  the  cross-questioning. 

"  That  is  none  of  your  business.  If  you  think  that  I 
stole  them,  say  so.  If  you  want  them,  buy  them.  One 
or  the  other." 

The  old  man  watched  her  amusedly. 

"  You  can  be  very  fierce,"  he  said  to  her.  "  Be  gentle 
a  little,  and  tell  me  whence  you  came,  and-  what  story  you 
have." 

But  she  would  not. 

"  I  have-  not  come  here  to  speak  of  myself,"  she  said 
obstinately.     "  Will  you  take  the  coins,  or  leave  them  ?" 

"  I  will  take  them,"  he  said ;  and  he  went  to  a  cabinet 
in  another  room  and  brought  out  with  him  several  shin- 
ing gold  pieces. 

She  fastened  her  eager  eyes  on  them  thirstily. 

"  Here  is  payment,"  he  said  to  her,  holding  them  to 
her. 

Her  eyes  fastened  on  the  money  entranced ;  she  touched 
it  with  a  light,  half-fearful  touch,  and  then  drew  back  and 
gazed  at  it  amazed. 

"All  that  — all  that?"  she  muttered.  "Is  It  their 
worth  ?     Are  you  sure  ?" 

11  Quite  sure,"  he  said  with  a  smile.  He  offered  her  in 
them  some  thirty  times  their  value. 


364  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

She  paused  for  a  moment,  incredulous  of  her  own  good 
fortune,  then  darted  on  them  as  a  swallow  at  a  gnat,  and 
took  them  and  put  them  to  her  lips,  and  laughed  a  sweet 
glad  laugh  of  triumph,  aud  slid  them  in  her  bosom. 

"  I  am  grateful,"  she  said  simply ;  but  the  radiance  in 
her  eyes,  the  laughter  on  her  mouth,  the  quivering  excite- 
ment in  all  her  face  and  form,  said  the  same  thing  for  her 
far  better  than  her  words. 

The  old  man  watched  her  narrowly. 

"  They  are  not  for  yourself?"  he  asked. 

"  That  is  my  affair,"  she  answered  him,  all  her  pride 
rising  in  arms.     "  What  concerned  you  was  their  value." 

He  smiled  and  bent  his  head. 

"  Fairly  rebuked.  But  say  is  this  all  you  came  for  ? 
Wherever  you  came  from,  is  this  all  that  brought  you 
here  ?" 

She  looked  awhile  in  his  eyes  steadily,  then  she  brought 
the  sketches  from  their  hiding-place.  She  placed  them 
before  him. 

"  Look  at  those." 

He  took  them  to  the  b'ght  and  scanned  them  slowly 
and  critically ;  he  knew  all  the  mysteries  and  intricacies 
of  art,  and  he  recognized  in  these  slight  things  the  hand 
and  the  color  of  a  master.  He  did  not  say  so,  but  held 
them  for  some  time  in  silence. 

"  These  also  are  for  sale  ?"  he  asked  at  length. 

She  had  drawn  near  him,  her  face  flushed  with  intense 
expectation,  her  longing  eyes  dilated,  her  scarlet  lips 
quivering  with  eagerness.  That  he  was  a  stranger  and 
a  noble  was  nothing  to  her:  she  knew  he  had  wealth; 
she  saw  he  had  perception. 

"See  here!"  she  said,  swiftly,  the  music  of  her  voice 
rising  and  falling  in  breathless,  eloquent  intonation. 
"  Those  things  are  to  the  great  works  of  his  hand  as  a 
broken  leaf  beside  your  gardens  yonder.  He  touches  a 
thing  and  it  is  beauty.  He  takes  a  reed,  a  stone,  a 
breadth  of  sand,  a  woman's  face,  and  under  his  hand  it 
grows  glorious  and  gracious.  He  dreams  things  that  are 
strange  and  sublime ;  he  has  talked  with  the  gods,  and 
he  haS'Seen  the  worlds  beyond  the  sun.  All  the  day  he 
works  for  his  bread,  and  in  the  gray  night  he  wanders 


FOLLE-FARINE.  365 

where  none  can  follow  him  ;  and  he  brings  back  marvels 
and  mysteries,  and  beautiful,  terrible  stories  that  are  like 
the  sound  of  the  sea.  Yet  he  is  poor,  and  no  man  sees 
the  things  of  his  hand ;  and  he  is  sick  of  his  life,  because 
the  days  go  by  and  bring  no  message  to  him,  and  men 
will  have  nothing  of  him ;  and  he  has  hunger  of  body 
and  hunger  of  mind.  For  me,  if  I  could  do  what  he 
does,  I  would  not  care  though  no  man  ever  looked  on  it. 
But  to  him  it  is  bitter  that  it  is  only  seen  by  the  newt, 
and  the  beetle,  and  the  night-hawk.  It  wears  his  soul 
away,  because  he  is  denied  of  men.  'If  I  had  gold,  if  I 
had  gold  1'  he  says  always,  when  he  thinks  that  none  can 
hear  him." 

Her  voice  trembled  and  was  still  for  a  second ;  she 
struggled  with  herself  and  kept  it  clear  and  strong. 

The  old  man  never  interrupted  her. 

11  He  must  not  know :  he  would  kill  himself  if  he  knew ; 
he  would  sooner  die  than  tell  any  man.  But,  look  you, 
you  drape  your  pictures  here  with  gold  and  with  purple, 
you  place  them  high  in  the  light ;  you  make  idols  of  them, 
and  burn  your  incense  before  them.  That  is  what  he 
wants  for  his :  they  are  the  life  of  his  life.  If  they  could 
be  honored,  he  would  not  care,  though  you  should  slay 
him  to-morrow.  Go  to  him,  and  make  you  idols  of  his  : 
they  are  worthier  gods  than  yours.  And  what  his  heart 
is  sick  for  is  to  have  them  seen  by  men.  Were  I  he,  I 
would  not  care ;  but  he  cares,  so  that  he  perishes." 

She  shivered  as  she  spoke ;  in  her  earnestness  and 
eagerness,  she  laid  her  hand  on  the  stranger's  arm,  and 
held  it  there;  she  prayed,  with  more  passion  than  she 
would  have  cast  into  any  prayer  to  save  her  own  life. 

"  Where  is  he ;  and  what  do  you  call  him  ?"  the  old 
man  asked  her  quietly. 

He  understood  the  meaning  that  ran  beneath  the  un- 
conscious extravagance  of  her  fanciful  and  impassioned 
language. 

"He  is  called  Arslan ;  he  lives  in  the  granary-tower, 
by  the  river,  between  the  town  and  Ypres.  He  comes 
from  the  north,  far  away — very,  very  far,  where  the  seas 
are  all  ice  and  the  sun  shines  at  midnight.  Will  you 
make  the  things  that  he  does  to  be  known  to  the  people  ? 

31* 


366  FOLLE-FARINE. 

You  have  gold ;  and  gold,  he  says,  is  the  compeller  of 
men." 

"  Arslan  ?"  he  echoed. 

The  name  was  not  utterly  unknown  to  him ;  he  had 
seen  works  signed  with  it  at  Paris  and  at  Rome — strange 
things  of  a  singular  power,  of  a  union  of  cynicism  and 
idealism,  which  was  too  coarse  for  one-half  the  world, 
and  too  pure  for  the  other  half. 

"Arslan? — I  think  I  remember.  I  will  see  what  I 
can  do." 

"  You  will  say  nothing  to  him  of  me." 

"  I  could  not  say  much.  Who  are  you  ?  Whence  do 
you  come  ?" 

"  I  live  at  the  water-mill  of  Ypres.  They  say  that 
Reine  Flamma  was  my  mother.  I  do  not  know :  it  does 
not  matter." 

"  What  is  your  name  ?" 

"  Folle-Farine.     They  called  me  after  the  mill-dust." 

"A  strange  namesake." 

"  What  does  it  matter?  Any  name  is  only  a  little  puff 
of  breath — less  than  the  dust,  anyhow." 

"  Is  it  ?     I  see,  you  are  a  Communist." 

"  What  ?" 

"A  Communist — a  Socialist.  You  know  what  that  is. 
You  would  like  to  level  my  house  to  the  ashes,  I  fancy, 
by  the  look  on  your  face." 

"No,"  she  said,  simply,  with  a  taint  of  scorn,  "I  do 
not  care  to  do  that.  If  I  had  cared  to  burn  anything  it 
would  have  been  the  Flandrins'  village.  It  is  odd  that 
you  should  live  in  a  palace  and  he  should  want  for  bread  ; 
but  then  he  can  create  things,  and  you  can  only  buy  them. 
So  it  is  even,  perhaps." 

The  old  man  smiled,  amused. 

"  You  are  no  respecter  of  persons,  that  is  certain. 
Come  in  another  chamber  and  take  some  wine,  and  break 
your  fast.  There  will  be  many  things  here  that  you  never 
saw  or  tasted." 

She  shook  her  head. 

"  The  thought  is  good  of  you,"  she  said,  more  gently 
than  she  had  before  spoken.  "  But  I  never  took  a  crust 
out  of  charity,  and  I  will  not  begin." 


FOLLE-FARINE.  36t 

"  Charity !     Do  you  call  an  invitation  a  charity  ?" 

"  When  the  rich  ask  the  poor — yes." 

He  looked  in  her  eyes  with  a  smile. 

11  But  when  a  man,  old  and  ugly,  asks  a  woman  that  is 
young  and  beautiful,  on  which  side  lies  the  charity  then  ?" 

"I  do  not  favor  fine  phrases,"  she  answered  curtly, 
returning  his  look  with  a  steady  indifference. 

"  You  are  hard  to  please  in  anything,  it  would  seem. 
Well,  come  hither,  a  moment  at  least." 

She  hesitated ;  then,  thinking  to  herself  that  to  refuse 
would  seem  like  fear,  she  followed  him  through  several 
chambers  into  one  where  his  own  mid-day  breakfast  was 
set  forth. 

She  moved  through  all  the  magnificence  of  the  place 
with  fearless  steps,  and  meditative  glances,  and  a  grave 
measured  easy  grace,  as  tranquil  and  as  unimpressed  as 
though  she  walked  through  the  tall  ranks  of  the  seeding 
grasses  on  a  meadow  slope. 

It  was  all  full  of  the  color,  the  brilliancy,  the  choice 
adornment,  the  unnumbered  treasures,  and  the  familiar 
luxuries  of  a  great  noble's  residence  ;  but  such  things  as 
these  had  no  awe  for  her. 

The  mere  splendors  of  wealth,  the  mere  accumulations 
of  luxury,  could  not  impress  her  for  an  instant;  she 
passed  through  them  indifferent  and  undaunted,  thinking 
to  herself,  "However  they  may  gild  their  roofs,  the  roofs 
shut  out  the  sky  no  less." 

Only,  as  she  passed  by  some  dream  of  a  great  poet 
cast  in  the  visible  shape  of  sculpture  or  of  painting,  did 
her  glance  grow  reverent  and  humid  ;  only  when  she 
recognized  amidst  the  marble  forms,  or  the  pictured  sto- 
ries, some  one  of  those  dear  gods  in  whom  she  had  a  faith 
as  pure  and  true  as  ever  stirred  in  the  heart  of  an  Ionian 
child,  did  she  falter  and  pause  a  little  to  gaze  there  with 
a  tender  homage  in  her  eyes. 

The  old  man  watched  her  with  a  musing  studious 
glance  from  time  to  time. 

"  Let  me  tempt  you,"  he  said  to  her  when  they  reached 
the  breakfast-chamber.  u  Sit  down  with  me  and  eat  and 
drink.  No  ?  Taste  these  sweetmeats  at  the  least.  To 
refuse  to  break  bread  with  me  is  churlish." 


368  FOLLE-FARWE. 

" 1  never  owed  any  man  a  crust,  and  I  will  not  begin 
now,"  she  answered  obstinately,  indifferent  to  the  blaze 
of  gold  and  silver  before  her,  to  the  rare  fruits  and  flowers, 
to  the  wines  in  their  quaint  flagons,  to  the  numerous  at- 
tendants who  waited  motionless  around  her. 

She  was  sharply  hungered,  and  her  throat  was  parched 
with  the  heat  and  the  dust,  and  the  sweet  unwonted 
odors  of  the  wines  and  the  fruits  assailed  all  her  senses  ; 
but  he  besought  her  in  vain. 

She  poured  herself  out  some  water  into  a  goblet  of 
ruby  glass,  rimmed  with  a  band  of  pearls,  and  drank  it, 
and  set  down  the  cup  as  indifferently  as  though  she  had 
drunk  from  the  old  wooden  bowl  chained  among  the  ivy 
to  the  well  in  the  mill-yard. 

"  Your  denial  is  very  churlish,"  he  said,  after  many  a 
honeyed  entreaty,  which  had  met  with  no  other  answer 
from  her.  "  How  shall  you  bind  me  to  keep  bond  with 
you,  and  rescue  your  Northern  Regner  from  his  cave  of 
snakes,  unless  you  break  bread  with  me,  and  so  compel 
my  faith  ?» 

She  looked  at  him  from  under  the  dusky  cloud  of  her 
hair,  with  the  golden  threads  gleaming  on  it  like  sunrays 
through  darkness. 

"  A  word  that  needs  compelling,"  she  answered  him 
curtly,  "  is  broken  by  the  heart  before  the  lips  give  it. 
It  is  to  plant  a  tree  without  a  root,  to  put  faith  in  a  man 
that  needs  a  bond." 

He  watched  her  with  keen  humorous  eyes  of  amuse- 
ment. 

"  Where  have  you  got  all  your  wisdom?"  he  asked. 

"  It  is  not  wisdom  ;  it  is  truth." 

"  And  truth  is  not  wisdom  ?  You  would  seem  to  know 
the  world  well." 

She  laughed  a  little  short  laugh,  whilst  her  face  clouded. 

"  I  know  it  not  at  all.  But  I  will  tell  you  what  I  have 
seen. " 

"And  that  is " 

"  I  have  seen  a  great  toadstool  spring  np  all  in  one 
night,  after  rain,  so  big,  and  so  white,  and  so  smooth, 
and  so  round, — and  I  knew  its  birth  was  so  quick,  and 


FOLLE-FARINE.  •  369 

its  growth  was  so  strong,  because  it  was  a  false  thing 
that  would  poison  all  that  should  eat  of  it." 

"Well?" 

"  Well  —  when  men  speak  overquick  and  overfair, 
what  is  that  but  the  toadstool  that  springs  from  their 
breath  ?" 

"  Who  taught  you  so  much  suspicion  ?" 

Her  face  darkened  in  anger. 

"  Suspicion  ?  That  is  a  thing  that  steals  in  the  dark 
and  is  afraid.     I  am  afraid  of  nothing." 

"  So  it  would  seem." 

He  mused  a  moment  whether  he  should  offer  her  back 
her  sequins  as  a  gift ;  he  thought  not.  He  divined  aright 
that  she  had  only  sold  them  because  she  had  innocently 
believed  in  the  fullness  of  their  value.  He  tried  to  tempt 
her  otherwise. 

She  was  young ;  she  had  a  beautiful  face,  and  a  form 
like  an  Atalanta.  She  wore  a  scarlet  sash  girt  to  her 
loins,  and  seemed  to  care  for  color  and  for  grace.  There 
was  about  her  a  dauntless  and  imperious  freedom.  She 
could  not  be  indifferent  to  all  those  powers  which  she 
besought  with  such  passion  for  another. 

He  had  various  treasures  shown  to  her, — treasures  of 
jewels,  of  gold  and  silver,  of  fine  workmanship,  of  woven 
stuffs  delicate  and  gorgeous  as  the  wing  of  a  butterfly. 
She  looked  at  them  tranquilly,  as  though  her  eyes  had 
rested  on  such  things  all  her  days. 

"  They  are  beautiful,  no  doubt,"  she  said  simply.  "  But 
I  marvel  that  you — being  a  man — care  for  such  things  as 
these." 

"  Nay ;  I  care  to  give  them  to  beautiful  women,  when 
such  come  to  me, — as  one  has  come  to-day.  Do  me 
one  trifling  grace  ;  choose  some  one  thing  at  least  out  of 
these  to  keep  in  remembrance  of  me." 

Her  eyes  burned  in  anger. 

"  If  I  think  your  bread  would  soil  my  lips,  is  it  likely 
I  should  think  to  touch  your  treasure  with  my  hands  and 
have  them  still  clean  ?" 

"You  are  very  perverse,"  he  said,  relinquishing  his 
efforts  with  regret. 

He  knew  how  to  wait  for  a  netted  fruit  to  ripen  under 


370  FOLLE-FARINE. 

the  rays  of  temptation :  gold  was  a  forcing-heat — slow, 
but  sure. 

She  watched  him  with  musing  eyes  that  had  a  gleam 
of  scorn  in  them,  and  yet  a  vague  apprehension. 

"  Are  you  the  Red  Mouse  ?"  she  said  suddenly. 

He  looked  at  her  surprised,  and  for  the  moment  per- 
plexed ;  then  he  laughed — his  little  low  cynical  laugh. 

"  What  makes  you  hink  that?" 

"  I  do  not  know.  You  look  like  it — that  is  all.  He  has 
made  one  sketch  of  me  as  I  shall  be  when  I  am  dead  ; 
and  the  Red  Mouse  sits  on  my  chest,  and  it  is  glad.  You 
see  that,  by  its  glance.  I  never  asked  him  what  he  meant 
by  it.  Some  evil,  1  think ;  and  you  look  like  it.  You 
have  the  same  triumph  in  your  eye." 

He  laughed  again,  not  displeased,  as  she  had  thought 
that  he  would  be. 

"  He  has  painted  you  so  ?  I  must  see  that.  But  be- 
lieve me,  Folle-Farine,  I  shall  wish  for  my  triumph  before 
your  beauty  i3  dead — if  I  am  indeed  the  Red  Mouse." 

She  shrunk  a  little  with  an  unconscious  and  uncon- 
trollable gesture  of  aversion. 

"  I  must  go,"  she  said  abruptly.  "  The  mules  wait. 
Remember  him,  and  I  will  remember  you." 

He  smiled. 

"  Wait :  have  you  thought  what  a  golden  key  for  him 
will  do  for  you  when  it  unlocks  your  eagle's  cage  and 
unbinds  his  wings?" 

-  What  ?" 

She  did  not  understand ;  when  she  had  come  on  this 
eager  errand,  no  memory  of  her  own  fate  had  retarded  or 
hastened  her  footsteps. 

"  Well,  you  look  to  take  the  same  flight  to  the  same 
heights,  I  suppose?" 

"I?" 

"  Yes,  you.  You  must  know  you  are  beautiful.  You 
must  know  so  much  ?" 

A  proud  light  laughed  like  sunshine  over  all  her  face. 

"  Ah,  yes  !"  she  said,  with  a  low,  glad  breath,  and  the 
blaze  of  a  superb  triumph  in  her  eyes.  "  He  has  painted 
me  in  a  thousand  ways.  I  shall  live  as  the  rose  lives,  on 
his  canvas — a  thing  of  a  day  that  he  can  make  immortal  I" 


FOLLE-FARINE.  371 

The  keen  elfin  eyes  of  the  old  man  sparkled  with  a 
malign  mirth;  he  had  found  what  he  wanted — as  he 
thought. 

"And  so,  if  this  dust  of  oblivion  blots  out  his  canvas 
forever  from  the  world's  sight,  your  beauty  will  be  blotted 
with  it?  I  see.  Well,  I  can  understand  how  eager  you 
are  to  have  your  eagle  fly  free.  The  fame  of  the  Farnarina 
stands  only  second  to  the  fame  of  Cleopatra." 

u  Farnarina  ?     What  is  that  ?" 

"  Farnarina  ?  One  who,  like  you,  gave  the  day's  life  of 
a  rose,  and  who  got  eternal  life  for  it, — as  you  think  to 
do." 

She  started  a  little,  and  a  tremulous  pain  passed  over 
the  dauntless  brilliance  of  her  face  and  stole  its  color  for 
awhile. 

"  I  V1  she  murmured.  "  Ah,  what  does  it  matter  for 
me  ?  If  there  be  just  a  little  place — anywhere — wherever 
my  life  can  live  with  his  on  the  canvas,  so  that  men  say 
once  now  and  then,  in  all  the  centuries,  to  each  other,  i  See, 
it  is  true — he  thought  her  worthy  of  that,  though  she  was 
less  than  a  grain  of  dust  under  the  hollow  of  his  foot/  it 
will  be  enough  for  me — more  than  enough. " 

The  old  man  was  silent;  watching  her,  the  mockery 
had  faded  from  his  eyes ;  they  were  surprised  and  con- 
templative. 

She  stood  with  her  head  drooped,  with  her  face  pale, 
an  infinite  yearning  and  resignation  stole  into  the  place 
of  the  exultant  triumph  which  had  blazed  there  like  the 
light  of  the  morning  a  moment  earlier. 

She  had  lost  all  remembrance  of  time  and  place  ;  the 
words  died  softly,  as  in  a  sigh  of  love,  upon  her  lips. 

He  waited  awhile  ;  then  he  spoke  : 

"  But,  if  you  were  sure  that,  even  thus  much  would  be 
denied  to  you  ;  if  you  were  sure  that,  in  casting  your 
eagle  loose  on  the  wind,  you  would  lose  him  forever  in 
the  heights  of  a  heaven  you  would  never  enter  yourself; 
if  you  were  sure  that  he  would  never  give  you  one  thought, 
one  wish,  one  memory,  but  leave  every  trace  of  your 
beauty  to  perish  as  fast  as  the  damp  could,  rot  or  the 
worm  could  gnaw  it ;  if  you  were  sure  that  his  immortal- 
ity would  be  your  annihilation,  say,  would  you  still  bid 


3f2  FOLLE-FARINE. 

me  turn  a  gold  key  in  the  lock  of  his  cage,  and  release 
him  ?" 

She  roused  herself  slowly  from  her  reverie,  and  gazed 
at  him  with  a  smile  he  could  not  fathom ;  it  was  so  far 
away  from  him,  so  full  of  memory,  so  pitiful  of  his  doubt. 

She  was  thinking  of  the  night  when  she  had  found  a 
man  dying,  and  had  bought  his  life  back  for  him,  with 
her  own,  from  the  gods.  For  the  pact  was  sacred  to  her, 
and  the  old  wild  faith  to  her  was  still  a  truth. 

But  of  it  her  lips  never  spoke. 

°  What  is  that  to  you  f"  she  said,  briefly.  "  If  you 
turn  the  key,  you  will  see.  It  was  not  of  myself  that  I 
came  here  to  speak.  Give  him  liberty,  and  I  will  give 
you  gratitude.     Farewell." 

Before  he  had  perceived  what  she  was  about  to  do, 
she  had  left  his  side,  and  had  vanished  through  one  of  the 
doors  which  stood  open,  on  to  the  gardens  without. 

He  sent  his  people  to  search  for  her  ou  the  terraces  and 
lawns,  but  vainly ;  she  wTas  fleeter  than  they,  and  had 
gone  through  the  green  glades  in  the  sunlight  as  fast  as 
a  doe  flies  down  the  glades  of  her  native  forest. 

The  old  man  sat  silent. 


CHAPTER  II. 


When  she  had  outrun  her  strength  for  the  moment, 
and  was  forced  to  slacken  her  speed,  she  paused  to  take 
breath  on  the  edge  of  the  wooded  lands. 

She  looked  neither  to  right  nor  left ;  on  her  backward 
flight  the  waters  had  no  song,  the  marble  forms  no  charm, 
the  wonder-flowers  no  magic  for  her  as  she  went;  she 
had  no  ear  for  the  melodies  of  the  birds,  no  sight  for  the 
paradise  of  the  rose-hung  ways ;  she  had  only  one  thought 
left — the  gold  that  she  had  gained. 

The  cruelty  of  his  remarks  had  stabbed  her  with  each 
of  their  slow  keen  words  as  with  a  knife  ;  the  sickness  of 
a  mortal  terror  had  touched  her  for  the  instant,  as  she  had 
remembered  that  it  might  be  her  late  to  be  not  even  so 


FOLLE-FARINE.  373 

much  as  a  memory  in  the  life  which  she  had  saved  from 
the  grave.  But  with  the  first  breath  of  the  outer  air  the 
feebleness  passed.  The  strength  of  the  passion  that  pos- 
sessed her  was  too  pure  to  leave  her  long  a  prey  to  any 
thought  of  her  own  fate. 

She  smiled  again  as  she  looked  up  through  the  leaves 
at  the  noonday  sun. 

"  What  will  it  matter  how  or  when  the  gods  take  my 
life,  so  only  they  keep  their  faith  and  give  me  his  ?"  she 
thought. 

And  her  step  was  firm  and  free,  and  her  glance  cloud- 
less, and  her  heart  content,  as  she  went  on  her  homeward 
path  through  the  heat  of  the  day. 

She  was  so  young,  she  was  so  ignorant,  she  was  still 
so  astray  in  the  human  world  about  her,  that  she  thought 
she  held  a  talisman  in  those  nine  gold  pieces. 

"  A  little  gold,"  he  had  said ;  and  here  she  had  it — 
honest,  clean,  worthy  of  his  touch  and  usage. 

Her  heart  leaped  to  the  glad  and  bounding  music  of 
early  youth  :  youth  which  does  not  reason,  which  only 
believes,  and  which  sees  the  golden  haze  of  its  own  faiths, 
and  thinks  them  the  promise  of  the  future,  as  young  chil- 
dren see  the  golden  haze  of  their  own  hair  and  think  it  the 
shade  of  angels  above  their  heads. 

When  she  at  length  reached  the  mill-house  the  sun  had 
sunk  ;  she  had  been  sixteen  hours  on  foot,  taking  nothing 
all  the  while  but  a  roll  of  rye  bread  that  she  had  carried 
in  her  pouch,  and  a  few  water-cresses  that  she  had  gath- 
ered in  a  little  brook  when  the  mules  had  paused  to  drink 
there. 

Yet  when  she  had  housed  the  grain,  turned  the  tired 
animals  into  their  own  nook  of  meadow  to  graze  and  rest 
for  the  night,  she  entered  the  house  neither  for  repose  nor 
food,  but  flew  off  again  through  the  dusk  of  the  falling 
night. 

She  had  no  remembrance  of  hunger,  nor  thirst,  nor 
fatigue  ;  she  had  only  a  buoyant  sense  of  an  ecstatic  joy; 
she  felt  as  though  she  had  wings,  and  clove  the  air  with 
no  more  effort  than  the  belated  starling  which  flew  by 
her  over  the  fields. 

"A  little  gold,"  he  had  said ;  and  in  her  bosom,  wrapped 

32 


374  FOLLE-FAEINE. 

in  a  green  chestnut  leaf,  were  there  not  the  little,  broad, 
round,  glittering  pieces  which  in  the  world  of  men  seemed 
to  have  power  to  gain  all  love,  all  honor,  all  peace,  aud  all 
fealty  ? 

11  Phratos  would  have  wished  his  gift  to  go  so,"  she 
thought  to  herself,  with  a  swift,  penitent,  remorseful 
memory. 

For  a  moment  she  paused  and  took  them  once  more 
out  of  their  hiding-place,  and  undid  the  green  leaf  that 
enwrapped  them,  and  kissed  them  and  laughed,  the  hot 
tears  falling  down  her  cheeks,  where  she  stood  alone 
in  the  fields  amid  the  honey-smell  of  the  clover  in  the 
grass,  and  the  fruit-fragrance  of  the  orchards  all  about 
her  in  the  dimness. 

"  A  little  gold  ! — a  little  gold  !"  she  murmured,  and 
she  laughed  aloud  in  her  great  joy,  and  blessed  the  gods 
that  they  had  given  her  to  hear  the  voice  of  his  desire. 

"  A  little  gold,"  he  had  said,  only ;  and  here  she  had 
so  much  ! 

No  sorcerer,  she  thought,  ever  had  power  wider  than 
this  wealth  bestowed  on  her.  She  did  not  know;  she, 
had  no  measurement.  Flamma's  eyes  she  had  seen 
glisten  over  a  tithe  of  such  a  sum  as  over  the  riches  of 
an  emperor's  treasury. 

She  slipped  them  in  her  breast  again  and  ran  on,  past 
the  reeds  silvering  in  the  rising  moon,  past  the  waters 
quiet  on  a  windless  air,  past  the  dark  Christ  who  would 
not  look, — who  had  never  looked,  or  she  had  loved  him 
with  her  earliest  love,  even  as  for  his  pity  she  loved 
Thanatos. 

Breathless  and  noiseless  she  severed  the  reeds  with  her 
swift  feet,  and  lightly  as  a  swallow  on  the  wing  passed 
through  the  dreary  portals  into  Arslan's  chamber. 

His  lamp  was  lighted. 

He  stood  before  the  cartoon  of  the  Barabbas,  touching 
it  here  and  there  with  his  charcoal,  adding  those  latest 
thoughts,  those  after-graces,  with  which  the  artist  de- 
lights to  caress  his  picture,  with  a  hand  as  soft  and  as 
lingering  as  the  hand  with  which  a  mother  caresses  the 
yellow  sunshine  of  her  first-born's  curls. 

His  face  as  he  stood  was  very  pale,  passionless,  weary, 


FOLLE-FARINE.  375 

with  a  sadness  sardonic  and  full  of  scorn  for  himself  on 
his  mouth,  and  in  his  eyes  those  dreams  which  went  so 
far — so  far — into  worlds  whose  glories  his  hand  could 
portray  for  no  human  sight. 

He  was  thinking,  as  he  worked,  of  the  Barabbas. 

y  You  must  rot,"  he  thought.  "  You  will  feed  the  rat 
and  the  mouse ;  the  squirrel  will  come  and  gnaw  you  to 
line  his  nest;  and  the  beetle  and  the  fly  will  take  you  for 
a  spawning-bed.  You  will  serve  no  other  end — since  you 
are  mine.  And  yet  I  am  so  great  a  fool  that  I  love  you, 
and  try  to  bring  you  closer  and  closer  to  the  thing  I  see, 
and  which  you  are  not,  and  never  can  be.  For  what 
man  lives  so  happy  as  to  see  the  Canaan  of  his  ideals, — 
save  as  Moses  saw  it  from  afar  off,  only  to  raise  his  arms 
to  it  vainly,  and  die  ?" 

There  came  a  soft  shiver  of  the  air,  as  though  it  were 
severed  by  some  eager  bird. 

She  came  and  stood  beside  him,  a  flash  like  the  sunrise 
on  her  face,  a  radiance  in  her  eyes,  more  lustrous  than 
any  smile ;  her  body  tremulous  and  breathless  from  the 
impatient  speed  with  which  her  footsteps  had  been 
winged  ;  about  her  all  the  dew  and  fragrance  of  the 
night. 

"  Here  is  the  gold  1"  she  cried. 

Her  voice  was  eager  and  broken  with  its  too  great  haste. 

"  Gold  ?" 

He  turned  and  looked  at  her,  ignorant  of  her  meaning, 
astonished  at  her  sudden  presence  there. 

"  Here  is  the  gold !"  she  murmured,  her  voice  rising 
swift  and  clear,  and  full  of  the  music  of  triumph  with  . 
which  her  heart  was  thrilling.     "  'A  little  gold,'  you  said, 
you  remember  ? — \  only  a  little.'  And  this  is  much.    Take 
it — take  it !     Do  you  not  hear?" 

"  Gold  ?"  he  echoed  again,  shaken  from  his  trance  of 
thought,  and  comprehending  nothing  and  remembering 
nothing  of  the  words  that  he  had  spoken  in  his  solitude. 

"  Yes  !  It  is  mine,"  she  said,  her  voice  broken  in  its 
tumult  of  ecstasy — "it  is  mine — all  mine.  It  is  no 
charity,  no  gift  to  me.  The  chain  was  worth  it,  and  I 
would  only  take  what  it  was  worth.     A  little  gold,  you 


376  FOLLE-FARINE. 

said ;  and  now  you  can  make  the  Barabbas  live  forever 
upon  canvas,  and  compel  men  to  say  that  it  is  great." 

As  the  impetuous,  tremulous  words  broke  from  her, 
she  drew  the  green  leaf  with  the  coins  in  it  from  her 
bosom,  and  thrust  it  into  his  hand,  eager,  exultant, 
laughing,  weeping,  all  the  silence  and  the  control  of  her 
nature  swept  away  in  the  flood  of  this  immeasurable  joy 
possessing  her. 

The  touch  of  the  glittering  pieces  against  his  hands 
stung  him  to  comprehension ;  his  face  flushed  over  all 
its  pallor ;  he  thrust  it  away  with  a  gesture  of  abhorrence 
and  rejection. 

"  Money  1"  he  muttered.     "  What  money  ? — yours  ?" 

"Yes,  mine  entirely;  mine  indeed!"  she  answered, 
with  a  sweet,  glad  ring  of  victory  in  her  rejoicing  voice. 
"It  is  true,  quite  true.  They  were  the  chains  of  se- 
quins that  Phratos  gave  me  when  I  used  to  dance  to  his 
music  in  the  mountains  ;  and  I  have  sold  them.  J  A  little 
gold,'  you  said;  'and  the  Barabbas  can  live  forever.' 
Why  do  you  look  so  ?     It  is  all  mine  ;  all  yours " 

In  the  last  words  her  voice  lost  all  its  proud  exultation, 
and  sank  low,  with  a  dull  startled  wonder  in  it. 

Why  did  he  look  so  ? 

His  gesture  of  refusal  she  had  not  noticed.  But  the 
language  his  glance  spoke  was  one  plain  to  her.  It 
terrified  her,  amazed  her,  struck  her  chill  and  dumb. 

In  it  there  were  disgust,  anger,  loathing, — even  horror  ; 
and  yet  there  was  in  it  also  an  unwonted  softness,  which 
in  a  woman's  would  have  shown  itself  by  a  rush  of  sud- 
den tears. 

"What  do  you  think  that  I  have  done?"  she  mur- 
mured under  her  breath.  "  The  gold  is  mine — mine 
honestly.  I  have  not  stolen  it,  nor  begged  it.  I  got  it 
as  I  say.  Why  will  you  not  take  it  ?  Why  do  you  look 
at  me  so?" 

"  I  ?  Your  money  ?  God  in  heaven  1  what  can  you 
think  me  ?" 

She  grew  white  to  the  lips,  all  the  impetuous,  radiant 
tumult  of  her  innocent  rapture  frozen  into  terror. 

"I  have  done  nothing  wrong,"  she  murmured  with  a 
piteous  wistfulness  and  wonder — "nothing   wrong,   in- 


FOLLE-FARINE.  $W 

deed ;  there  is  no  shame  in  it.  Will  you  not  take  it — 
for  their  sake  ?" 

He  turned  on  her  with  severity  almost  savage: 

"  It  is  impossible  !  Good  God  !  Was  I  not  low 
enough  already?  How  dared  you  think  a  thing  so  vile 
of  me  ?     Have  I  ever  asked  pity  of  any  living  soul  ?" 

His  voice  was  choked  in  his  throat ;  he  was  wounded 
to  the  heart. 

He  had  no  thought  that  he  was  cruel ;  he  had  no  in- 
tent to  terrify  or  hurt  her ;  but  the  sting  of  this  last  and 
lowest  humiliation  was  so  horrible  to  all  the  pride  of  his 
manhood,  and  so  bitterly  reminded  him  of  his  own  ab- 
ject poverty ;  and  with  all  this  there  was  an  emotion  in 
him  that  he  had  difficulty  to  control — being  touched  by 
her  ignorance  and  by  her  gift  as  few  things  in  his  life  had 
ever  touched  him. 

She  stood  before  him  trembling,  wondering,  sorely 
afraid ;  all  the  light  had  died  out  of  her  face  ;  she  was 
very  pale,  and  her  eyes  dilated  strangely. 

For  some  moments  there  was  silence  between  them. 

"You  will  not  take  it?"  she  said  at  last,  in  a  hushed, 
fearful  voice,  like  that  of  one  who  speaks  in  the  sight  of 
some  dead  thing  which  makes  all  quiet  around  it. 

*'  Take  it  I"  he  echoed.  "  I  could  sooner  kill  a  man  out 
yonder  and  rob  him.  Can  you  not  understand  ?  Greater 
shame  could  never  come  to  me.  You  do  not  know  what 
you  would  do.  There  may  be  beasts  that  fall  as  low,  no 
doubt,  but  they  are  curs  too  base  for  hanging.  Have  I 
frightened  you  ?  I  did  not  mean  to  frighten  you.  You 
mean  well  and  nobly,  no  doubt — no  doubt.  You  do  not 
know  what  you  would  do.  Gifts  of  gold  from  man  to 
man  are  bitter,  and  sap  the  strength  of  the  receiver  ;  but 
from  woman  to  man  they  are — to  the  man  shameful.  Can 
you  not  understand  ?" 

Her  face  burned  duskily ;  she  moved  with  a  troubled, 
confused  effort  to  get  away  from  his  gaze. 

"No,"  she  said  in  her  shut  teeth.  "I  do  not  know 
what  you  mean.  Flamma  takes  all  the  gold  I  make. 
Why  not  you,  if  it  be  gold  that  is  honest?" 

"  Flamma  is  your  grandsire — your  keeper — jjjpur  mas- 
ter. He  has  a  right  to  do  as  he  chooses.  He  gives  you 
v    32* 


3T8  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

food  and  shelter,  and  in  return  he  takes  the  gains  of  your 
labor.  But  I, — what  have  I  ever  given  you  ?  I  am  a 
stranger  to  you,  and  should  have  no  claim  on  you,  if  I 
could  be  base  enough  to  seek  one.  I  am  hideously  poor. 
I  make  no  disguise  with  you, — you  know  too  well  how  I 
live.  But  can  you  not  see  ? — if  I  were  mean  enough  to 
take  the  worth  of  a  crust  from  you,  I  should  be  no  more 
worthy  of  the  very  name  of  man.  It  is  for  the  man  to 
give  to  the  woman.     You  see  ?" 

She  heard  him  in  silence,  her  face  still  dark  with  the 
confused  pain  on  it  of  one  who  has  fallen  or  been  struck 
upon  the  head,  and  half  forgets  and  half  remembers. 

"  T  do  not  see,"  she  muttered.  "  Whoever  has,  gives : 
what  does  it  matter  ?  The  folly  in  me  was  its  littleness : 
it  could  not  be  of  use.     But  it  was  all  I  had." 

"  Little  or  great, — the  riches  of  empires,  or  a  beggar's 
dole, — there  could  be  no  difference  in  the  infamy  to  me. 
Have  I  seemed  to  you  a  creature  so  vile  or  weak  that 
you  could  have  a  title  to  put  such  shame  upon  me  f" 

Out  of  the  bitter  passion  of  his  soul,  words  more  cruel 
than  he  had  consciousness  of  rose  to  his  lips  and  leaped 
to  speech,  and  stung  her  as  scorpions  sting. 

She  said  nothing ;  her  teeth  clinched,  her  face  changed 
as  it  had  used  to  do  when  Flam  ma  had  beaten  her. 

She  said  nothing,  but  turned  away  ;  and  with  one  twist 
of  her  hand  she  flung  the  pieces  through  the  open  case- 
ment into  the  river  that  flowed  below. 

They  sank  with  a  little  shiver  of  the  severed  water. 

He  caught  her  wrist  a  second  too  late. 

"  What  madness !  What  have  you  done  ?  You  throw 
your  gold  awray  to  the  river-swamp  for  me,  when  I  have 
not  a  shred  worth  a  copper-piece  to  pay  you  back  in  their 
stead  !  I  did  not  mean  to  hurt  you ;  it  was  only  the 
truth, — you  could  not  have  shamed  me  more.  You  bring 
on  me  an  indignity  that  I  can  neither  requite  nor  revenge. 
You  have  no  right  to  load  me  with  debts  that  I  cannot 
pay — with  gifts  that  I  would  die  sooner  than  receive. 
But,  then,  how  should  you  know  ? — how  should  you 
know  ?  If  I  wounded  you  with  sharp  words,  I  did 
wrong."  * 

There  was  a  softness  that  was  almost  tenderness  in  his 


FOLLE-FARINE.  3  }  9 

voice  as  he  spoke  the  last  phrases  in  his  self-reproach; 
but  her  face  did  not  change,  her  eyes  did  not  lose  their 
startled  horror ;  she  put  her  hand  to  her  throat  as  though 
she  choked. 

"  You  cannot  do  wrong — to  me,"  she  muttered,  true, 
even  in  such  a  moment,  to  the  absolute  adoration  which 
possessed  her. 

Then,  ere  he  could  stay  her,  she  turned,  without  an- 
other word,  and  fled  out  from  his  presence  into  the  dusk 
of  the  night. 

The  rushes  in  the  moonlight  sighed  where  they  grew 
by  the  waterside  above  the  sands  where  the  gold  had 
sunk. 

A  thing  more  precious  than  gold  was  dead ;  and  only 
the  reeds  mourned  for  it.  A  thing  of  the  river  as  they 
were,  born  like  them  from  the  dust,  from  the  flood,  and 
the  wind,  and  the  foam  ;  a  thing  that  a  god  might  desire, 
a  thing  that  a  breeze  might  break. 


CHAPTER  III. 


The  day  broke  tranquilly.  There  was  a  rosy  light  over 
all  the  earth.  In  the  cornlands  a  few  belated  sheaves 
stood  alone  on  the  reaping  ground,  while  children  sought 
stray  ears  that  might  still  be  left  among  the  wild  flowers 
and  the  stubble.  The  smell  of  millions  of  ripening  autumn 
fruits  tilled  the  air  from  the  orchards.  The  women  going 
to  their  labor  in  the  fields,  gave  each  other  a  quiet  good- 
day  ;  whilst  their  infants  pulled  down  the  blackberry 
branches  in  the  lanes  or  bowled  the  early  apples  down 
the  roads.  Great  clusters  of  black  grapes  were  ready 
mellowed  on  the  vines  that  clambered  over  cabin  roof 
and  farmhouse  chimney.  The  chimes  of  the  Angelus 
sounded  softly  from  many  a  little  steeple  bosomed  in  the 
rolling  woods. 

An  old  man  going  to  his  work,  passed  by  a  girl  lying 
asleep  in  a  hollow  of  the  ground,  beneath  a  great  tree  of 


380  FOLLE-FARINE. 

elder,  black  with  berries.  She  was  lying  with  her  face 
turned  upward ;  her  arms  above  her  head ;  her  eyelids 
were  wet ;  her  mouth  smiled  with  a  dreamy  tenderness ; 
her  lips  murmured  a  little  inaudiblyf  her  bosom  heaved 
with  fast  uneven  palpitating  breaths. 

It  was  sunrise.  In  the  elder  thicket  little  chaffinches 
were  singing,  and  a  missel-thrush  gave  late  in  the  year 
a  song  of  the  April  weather.  The  east  was  radiant  with 
the  promise  of  a  fair  day,  in  which  summer  and  autumn 
should  be  wedded  with  gorgeous  pomp  of  color,  and 
joyous  chorus  of  the  birds.  The  old  man  roughly  thrust 
against  her  breast  the  heavy  wooden  shoe  on  his  right 
foot. 

"  Get  up  !"  he  muttered.  "  Is  it  for  the  like  of  you  to 
lie.  and  sleep  at  day-dawn  ?  Get  up,  or  your  breath  will 
poison  the  grasses  that  the  cattle  feed  on,  and  they  will 
die  of  an  elf-shot,  surely." 

She  raised  her  head  from  where  it  rested  on  her  out- 
stretched arms,  and  looked  him  in  the  eyes  and  smiled  un- 
consciously :  then  glanced  around  and  rose  and  dragged 
her  steps  away,  in  the  passive  mechanical  obedience  be- 
gotten by  long  slavery. 

There  was  a  shiver  in  her  limbs ;  a  hunted  terror  in 
her  eyes;  she  had  wandered  sleepless  all  night  long. 

u  Beast,"  muttered  the  old  man,  trudging  on  with  a 
backward  glance  at  her.  "  You  have  been  at  a  witches' 
sabbath,  1  dare  be  bound.  We  shall  have  fine  sickness 
in  the  styes  and  byres.  I  wonder  would  a  silver  bullet 
hurt  you,  as  the  fables  say  ?  If  I  were  sure  it  would,  I 
would  not  mind  having  my  old  silver  flagon  melted  down, 
though  it  is  the  only  thing  worth  a  rush  in  the  house." 

She  went  on  through  the  long  wet  rank  grass,  not 
hearing  his  threats  against  her.  She  drew  her  steps 
slowly  and  lifelessly  through  the  heavy  dews ;  her  head 
was  sunk  ;  her  lips  moved  audibly,  and  murmured  as  she 
went,  "  A  little  gold  !  a  little  gold  !" 

"Maybe  some  one  has  shot  her  this  very  day-dawn," 
thought  the  peasant,  shouldering  his  axe  as  he  went 
down  into  the  little  wood  to  cut  ash-sticks  for  the  mar- 
ket. "  She  looks  half  dead  already  ;  and  they  say  the 
devil-begotten  never  bleed." 


FOLLE-FARINE.  381 

The  old  man  guessed  aright.  She  had  received  her 
mortal  wound  ;  though  it  was  one  bloodless  and  tearless, 
and  for  which  no  moan  was  made,  lest  any  should  blame 
the  slayer. 

The  sense  of  some  great  guilt  was  on  her,  as  she  stole 
through  the  rosy  warmth  of  the  early  morning. 

She  had  thought  to  take  him  liberty,  honor,  strength, 
and  dominion  among  his  fellows — and  he  had  told  her 
that  she  had  dealt  him  the  foulest  shame  that  his  life  had 
ever  known. 

"What  right  have  you  to  burden  me  with  debt  un- 
asked V*  he  had  cried  out  against  her  in  the  bitterness  of 
his  soul.  And  she  knew  that,  unasked,  she  had  laid  on 
him  the  debt  of  life. 

If  ever  he  should  know 

She  had  wandered  on  and  on,  aimlessly,  not  knowing 
what  she  did  all  the  night  through,  hearing  no  other  sound 
but  the  fierce  hard  scathing  scorn  of  his  reproaches. 

He  had  told  her  she  was  in  act  so  criminal,  and  yet  she 
knew  herself  in  intent  so  blameless ;  she  felt  like  those  of 
whom- she  had  heard  in  the  old  Hellenic  stories,  who  had 
been  doomed  by  fate,  guiltless  themselves,  to  work  some 
direful  guilt  which  had  to  be  wrought  out  to  its  bitter  end, 
the  innocent  yet  the  accursed  instrument  of  destiny,  even 
as  Adrastus  upon  Atys. 

On  and  on,  through  the  watery  moonlight  she  had  fled, 
when  she  left  the  water-tower  that  night ;  down  the  slope 
of  the  fields ;  the  late  blossoms  of  the  poppies,  and  the 
feathery  haze  of  the  ripened  grasses  tossed  in  waves  from 
right  to  left ;  the  long  shadows  of  the  clouds  upon  the 
earth,  chasing  her  like  the  specter  hosts  of  the  Aaskarreya 
of  his  Scandinavian  skies. 

She  had  dropped  at  last  like  a  dying  thing,  broken  and 
breathless,  on  the  ground.  There  she  crouched,  and  hid 
her  face  upon  her  hands ;  the  scorch  of  an  intolerable 
shame  burned  on  it. 

She  did  not  know  what  ailed  her ;  what  consumed  her 
with  abhorrence  of  herself.  She  longed  for  the  earth  to 
yawn  and  cover  her ;  for  the  lilies  asleep  in  the  pool,  to 
unclose  and  take  her  amidst  them.  Every  shiver  of  a 
leaf,  under  a  night-bird's  passage,  every  motion  of  the 


382  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

water,  as  the  willow  branches  swept  it,  made  her  start 
and  shiver  as  though  some  great  guilt  was  on  her  soul. 

Not  a  breath  of  wind  was  stirring,  not  a  sound  dis- 
turbed the  serenity  of  the  early  night ;  she  heard  no  voice 
but  the  plaintive  cry  of  the  cushat.  She  saw  "  no  snakes 
but  the  keen  stars,"  which  looked  on  her  cold  and  lu- 
minous, and  indifferent  to  human  woes  as  the  eyes  of 
Arslan. 

Yet  she  was  afraid  ;  afraid  with  a  trembling  horror  of 
herself;  she  who  had  once  never  known  one  pulse  of  fear, 
and  who  had  smiled  in  the  eyes  of  death  as  children  in 
their  mother's.  „ 

The  thrill  of  a  new-bom,  inexplicable,  cruel  consciousness 
stole  like  fire  through  her.  She  knew  now  that  she  loved 
him  with  that  strange  mystery  of  human  love  which  had 
been  forever  to  her  until  now  a  thing  apart  from  her,  de- 
nied to  her,  half  scorned,  half  yearned  for;  viewed  from 
afar  with  derision,  yet  with  desire,  as  a  thing  at  once  be- 
neath her  and  beyond  her. 

All  the  light  died  ;  the  moon  rose ;  the  white  lilies 
shivered  in  its  pallid  rays ;  the  night-birds  went  by  on 
the  wind.  She  never  stirred  ;  the  passionate  warmth  of 
her  frame  changed  to  a  deadly  cold ;  her  face  was  buried 
in  her  hands ;  ever  and  again  she  shivered,  and  glanced 
round,  as  the  sound  of  a  hare's  step,  or  the  rustle  of  a 
bough  by  a  squirrel,  broke  the  silence. 

The  calm  night-world  around  her,  the  silvery  seas  of 
reeds,  the  dusky  woods,  the  moon  in  its  ring  of  golden 
vapor,  the  flickering  foliage,  the  gleam  of  the  glowworm 
in  the  dew,  all  the  familiar  things  amidst  which  her  feet 
had  wandered  for  twelve  summers  in  the  daily  measure 
of  those  beaten  tracks  ;  all  these  seemed  suddenly  strange 
to  her — mysterious,  unreal. 

She  longed  for  the  day  to  dawn  again,  though  day  was 
but  an  hour  dead.  And  yet  she  felt  that  at  the  first  break 
of  light  she  must  flee  and  hide  from  his  and  every  eye. 

She  had  meant  to  give  him  honor  and  he  had  upbraided 
her  gift  as  shame. 

The  bitterness,  the  cruelty,  the  passion  of  his  re- 
proaches stung  her  with  their  poison,  as,  in  her  vision 
of  the  reed,  she  had  seen  the  barbed  tongues  of  a  thousand 


FOLLE-FARINE.  383 

snakes  striking  through  and  through  the  frail,  despised, 
blossomless  slave  of  the  wind. 

She  had  thought  that  as  the  god  to  the  reed,  so  might 
he  to  her  say  hereafter,  "  You  are  the  lowliest  and  least 
of  all  the  chance-born  things  of  the  sands  and  the  air,  and 
yet  through  you  has  an  immortal  music  arisen," — and  for 
the  insanity  of  her  thought  he  had  cursed  her. 

Towards  dawn,  where  she  had  sunk  down  in  the  moss, 
and  in  the  thickets  of  elder  and  thorn — where  she  had 
made  her  bed  in  her  childhood  many  a  summer  night, 
when  she  had  been  turned  out  from  the  doors  of  the  mill- 
house  ; — there  for  a  little  while  a  fitful  exhausted  sleep 
came  to  her;  the  intense  exhaustion  of  bodily  fatigue 
overcoming  and  drugging  to  slumber  the  fever  and  the 
wakefulness  of  the  mind.  The  thrush  came  out  of  the 
thorn,  while  it  was  still  quite  dark,  and  the  morning  stars 
throbbed  in  the  skies,  and  sang  his  day-song  close  about 
her  head. 

In  her  sleep  she  smiled.  For  Oneirus  was  merciful ; 
and  she  dreamed  that  she  slept  folded  close  in  the  arms 
of  Arslan,  and  in  her  dreams  she  felt  the  kisses  of  his 
lips  rain  fast  on  hers. 

Then  the  old  peasant  trudging  to  his  labor  in  the  ob- 
scurity of  the  early  day  saw  her,  and  struck  at  her  with 
his  foot  and  woke  her  roughly,  and  muttered,  "  Get  thee 
up :  is  it  such  beggars  as  thee  that  should  be  abed  when 
the  sun  breaks?" 

She  opened  her  eyes,  and  smiled  on  him  uncon- 
sciously, as  she  had  smiled  in  her  brief  oblivion.  The 
passion  of  her  dreams  was  still  about  her  ;  her  mouth 
burned,  her  limbs  trembled  ;  the  air  seemed  to  her  filled 
with  music,  like  the  sound  of  the  mavis  singing  in  the 
thorn. 

Then  she  remembered ;  and  shuddered ;  and  arose, 
knowing  the  sweet  mad  dream,  which  had  cheated  her,  a 
lie.     For  she  awoke  alone. 

She  did  not  heed  the  old  man's  words,  she  did  uot.feel 
his  hurt;  yet  she  obeyed  him,  and  left  the  place,  and 
dragged  herself  feebly  towards  Ypres  by  the  sheer  un- 
conscious working  of  that  instinct  born  of  habit  which 
takes  the  ox  or  the  ass  back  undriven  through  the  old 


384  FOLLE-FARINE. 

accustomed  ways  to  stand  beside  their  plowshare  or  their 
harness  faithfully  and  unbidden. 

Where  the  stream  ran  by  the  old  mill-steps  the  river- 
reeds  were  blowing  in  the  wind,  with  the  sunrays  play- 
ing in  their  midst,  and  the  silver  wings  of  the  swallows 
brushing  them  with  a  sweet  caress. 

"  I  thought  to  be  the  reed  chosen  by  the  gods  !"  she 
said  bitterly  in  her  heart,  "  but  I  am  not  worthy — even 
to  die." 

For  she  would  have  asked  of  fate  no  nobler  thing  than 
this — to  be  cut  down  as  the  reed  by  the  reaper,  if  so  be 
that  through  her  the  world  might  be  brought  to  hearken 
to  the  music  of  the  lips  that  she  loved. 

She  drew  her  aching  weary  limbs  "feebly  through  the 
leafy  ways  of  the  old  mill-garden.  The  first  leaves  of 
autumn  fluttered  down  upon  her  head  ;  the  last  scarlet 
of  the  roses  flashed  in  her  path  as  she  went ;  the  wine- 
like odors  of  the  fruits  were  all  about  her  on  the  air.  It 
was  then  fully  day.  The  sun  was  up ;  the  bells  rang  the 
sixth  hour  far  away  from  the  high  towers  and  spires  of 
the  town. 

At  the  mill-house,  and  in  the  mill-yard,  where  usually 
every  one  had  arisen  and  were  hard  at  labor  whilst  the 
dawn  was  dark,  everything  was  still.  There  was  no 
sign  of  work.  The  light  blazed  on  the  panes  of  the  case- 
ments under  the  eaves,  but  its  summons  failed  to  arouse 
the  sleepers  under  the  roof. 

The  bees  hummed  around  their  houses  of  straw ; 
the  pigeons  flew  to  and  fro  between  the  timbers  of 
the  walls,  and  the  boughs  of  the  fruit  trees.  The  mule 
leaned  his  head  over  the  bar  of  the  gate,  and  watched 
with  wistful  eyes.  The  cow  in  her  shed  lowed,  im- 
patient for  some  human  hands  to  unbar  her  door,  and 
lead  her  forth  to  her  green-clovered  pasture.  A  dumb 
boy,  who  aided  in  the  working  of  the  mill,  sat  astride  of 
a  log  of  timber,  kicking  his  feet  among  the  long  grasses, 
and  blowing  thistle  down  above  his  head  upon  the 
breeze. 

The  silence  and  the  inactivity  startled  her  into  a  sense 
of  them,  as  no  noise  or  movement,  curses  or  blows,  could 
have  done.     She  looked  around  stupidly;  the  window- 


FOLLE-FARINE.  385 

shutters  of  the  house-windows  were  closed,  as  though  it 
were  still  night. 

She  signed  rapidly  to  the  dumb  boy. 

"  What  has  happened  I  Why  is  the  mill  not  at  work 
thus  late  ?" 

The  boy  left  off  blowing  the  thistle  feathers  on  the 
wind,  and  grinned,  and  answered  on  his  hands,  "Flannna 
is  almost  dead,  they  say." 

And  he  grinned  again,  and  laughed,  as  far  as  his  un- 
couth and  guttural  noises  could  be  said  to  approach  the 
triumph  and  the  jubilance  of  laughter. 

She  stared  at  him  blankly  for  awhile,  bewildered  and 
shaken  from  the  stupor  of  her  own  misery.  She  had  never 
thought  of  death  and  her  tyrant  in  unison. 

He  had  seemed  a  man  formed  to  live  on  and  on  and  on 
unchanging  for  generations ;  he  was  so  hard,  so  unyield- 
ing, so  hale,  so  silent,  so  callous  to  all  pain ;  it  had  ever 
seemed  to  her — and  to  the  country  round — that  death 
itself  would  never  venture  to  come  to  wrestle  with  him. 
She  stood  among  the  red  and  the  purple  and  the  russet 
gold  of  the  latest  summer  flowers  in  the  mill-garden,  where 
he  had  scourged  her  as  a  little  child  for  daring  to  pause 
and  cool  her  burning  face  in  the  sweetness  of  the  white 
lilies.  Could  that  ruthless  arm  be  unnerved  even  by  age 
or  death  ? — it  seemed  to  her  impossible. 

All  was  quite  still.  Nothing  stirred,  except  the  silveiy 
gnats  of  the  morning,  and  the  bees,  and  the  birds  in  the 
leaves.  There  seemed  a  strange  silence  everywhere,  and 
the  great  wheels  stood  still  in  the  mill-water  ;  never  within 
the  memory  of  any  in  that  countryside  had  those  wheels 
failed  to  turn  at  sunrise,  unless  locked  by  a  winter-frost. 

She  hastened  her  steps,  and  went  within.  The  clock 
ticked,  the  lean  cat  mewed ;  other  sound  there  was  none. 
She  left  her  wooden  shoes  at  the  bottom  step,  and  stole 
up  the  steep  stairs.  The  woman  Pitchou  peered  with  a 
scared  face  out  from  her  master's  chamber. 

11  Where  hast  been  all  night  ?"  she  whispered  in  her 
grating  voice  ;  "thy  grandsire  lies  a-dying." 

"Dying?" 

"  Ay,"  muttered  the  old  peasant.  "  He  had  a  stroke 
33 


386      ,  FOLLE-FARWE. 

yester-night  as  he  came  from  the  corn-fair.  They  brought 
Iiim  home  in  the  cart.  He  is  as  good  as  dead.  You  are 
glad." 

"Hush  !"  muttered  the  girl  fiercely;  and  she  dropped 
down  on  the  topmost  step,  and  rested  her  head  on  her 
hands.  She  had  nothing  to  grieve  for  ;  and  yet  there  was 
that  in  the  coarse  congratulation  which  jarred  on  her  and 
hurt  her. 

She  thought  of  Manon  Dax  dead  in  the  snow ;  she 
thought  of  the  song-birds  dead  in  the  traps  ;  she  thought 
of  the  poor  coming — coming — coming — through  so  many 
winters  to  beg  bread,  and  going  away  with  empty  hands 
and  burdened  hearts,  cursing  God.  Was  this  death-bed 
all  their  vengeance?  It  was  but  poor  justice,  and  came 
late. 

Old  Pitchou  stood  and  looked  at  her. 

"Will  he  leave  her  the  gold  or  no  ?"  she  questioned  in 
herself;  musing  whether  or  no  it  were  better  to  be  civil 
to  the  one  who  might  inherit  all  his  wealth,  or  might  be 
cast  adrift  upon  the  world — who  could  say  which  ? 

After  awhile  Folle-Farine  rose  silently  and  brushed 
her  aside,  and  went  into  the  room. 

It  was  a  poor  chamber  ;  with  a  bed  of  straw  and  a  rough 
bench  or  two,  and  a  wooden  cross  with  the  picture  of  the 
Ascension  hung  above  it.  The  square  window  was  open, 
a  knot  of  golden  pear-leaves  nodded  to  and  fro  ;  a  linnet 
sang. 

On  the  bed  Claudis  Flamma  lay ;  dead  already,  except 
for  the  twitching  of  his  mouth,  and  the  restless  wanderings 
of  his  eyes.  Yet  not  so  lost  to  life  but  that  he  knew  her 
at  a  glance ;  and  as  she  entered,  glared  upon  her,  and 
clinched  his  numbed  hands  upon  the  straw,  and  with  a 
horrible  effort  in  his  almost  lifeless  limbs,  raised  the  right 
arm,  that  alone  had  any  strength  or  warmth  left  in  it,  and 
pointed  at  her  with  a  shriek : 

"  She  was  a  saint — a  saint:  God  took  her.  So  I  said  : 
— and  was  proud.  While  all  the  while  man  begot  on  her 
that  J" 

Then  with  a  ghastly  rattle  in  his  throat,  he  quivered, 
and  lay  paralyzed  again :  only  the  eyes  were  alive,  and 
were  still  speaking — awfully. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  33*7 

Folle-Fariue  went  up  to  his  bed,  and  stood  beside  it? 
looking  down  on  him. 

"  You  mean — my  mother  ?" 

It  was  the  first  time  that  she  had  ever  said  the  word. 
Her  voice  lingered  on  the  word,  as  though  loath  to  leave 
its  unfamiliar  sweetness.  t 

He  lay  and  looked  at  her,  motionless,  impatient,  life- 
less ;  save  only  for  the  bleak  and  bloodshot  stare  of  the 
stony  eyes. 

She  thought  that  he  had  heard  ;  but  he  made  no  sign 
in  answer. 

She  sank  down  on  her  knees  beside  his  bed,  and  put 
her  lips  close  to  him. 

"  Try  and  speak  to  me  of  my  mother — once — once," 
she  murmured,  with  a  pathetic  longing  in  her  voice. 

A  shudder  shook  his  frozen  limbs.  He  made  no  answer, 
he  only  glared  on  her  with  a  terrible  stare  that  might  be 
horror,  repentance,  grief,  memory,  fear— she  could  not 
tell. 

Old  Pitchou  stretched  her  head  from  the  corner,  as  a 
hooded  snake  from  its  hole. 

"  Ask  where  the  money  is  hid,"  she  hissed  in  a 
shrill  whisper.  "Ask — ask — while  he  can  yet  under- 
stand." 

He  understood,  for  a  smile  grim  and  horrible  disturbed 
his  tight  lips  a  moment. 

Folle-Farine  did  not  hear. 

"  Tell  me  of  my  mother  ; — tell  me,  tell  me,"  she  mut- 
tered. Since  a  human  love  had  been  born  in  her  heart, 
she  had  thought  often  of  that  mother  whose  eyes  had 
never  looked  on  her,  and  whose  breast  had  never  fed  her. 

His  face  changed,  but  he  did  not  speak ;  he  gasped  for 
breath,  and  lay  silent ;  his  eyes  trembled  and  confused ; 
it  might  be  that  in  that  moment  remorse  was  with  him, 
and  the  vain  regrets  of  cruel  years. 

It  might  be  that  dying  thus,  he  knew  that  from  his 
hearth,  as  from  hell,  mother  and  child  had  both  been 
driven  whilst  his  lips  had  talked  of  God. 

A  little  bell  rang  softly  in  the  orchard  below  the  case- 
ment ;  the  clear  voice  of  a  young  boy  singing  a  canticle 
crossed  the  voice  of  the  linnet ;  there  was  a  gleam  of  sil- 


383  FOLLE-FARWE. 

ver  in  the  sud.  The  Church  bore  its  Host  to  the  dying 
man. 

They  turned  her  from  the  chamber. 

The  eyes  of  one  unsanctified  might  not  gaze  upon  mys- 
teries of  the  blest.      -» 

Sh^  went  out  without  resistance ;  she  was  oppressed 
and  stupefied  ;  she  went  to  the  stairs,  and  there  sat  down 
again,  resting  her  forehead  on  her  hands. 

The  door  of  the  chamber  was  a  little  open,  and  she 
could  hear  the  murmurs  of  the  priest's  words,  and  smell 
the  odors  of  the  sacred  chrism.  A  great  bitterness  came 
on  her  mouth. 

11  One  crust  in  love — to  them — in  the  deadly  winters, 
had  been  better  worth  than  all  this  oil  and  prayer,"  she 
thought.  And  she  could  see  nothing  but  the  old  fam- 
ished face  of  Manon  Dax  in  the  snow  and  the  moonlight, 
as  the  old  woman  had  muttered,  "  God  is  good." 

The  officers  of  the  Church  ceased ;  there  reigned  an 
intense  stillness  ;  a  stillness  as  of  cold. 

Suddenly  the  voice  of  Claudis  Flamma  rang  out  loud 
and  shrill, — 

"  I  loved  her  1     Oh,  God !—  Thou  knowest !" 

She  rose  and  looked  through  the  space  of  the  open 
door  into  the  death-chamber. 

He  had  sprung  half  erect,  and  with  his  arms  out- 
stretched, gazed  at  the  gladness  and  the  brightness  of 
the  day.  In  his  eyes  there  was  a  mortal  agony,  a  pas- 
sion of  reproach. 

With  one  last  supreme  effort,  he  raised  the  crucifix 
which  the  priests  had  laid  upon  his  bare  anointed  breast, 
and  held  it  aloft,  and  shook  it,  and  spat  on  it,  and  cast  it 
forth  from  him  broken  upon  the  ground. 

"Even  Thouavt  a  liar  1"  he  cried, — it  was  the  cry  of  the 
soul  leaving  the  body, — with  the  next  moment  he  fell 
back — dead. 

In  that  one  cry  his  heart  had  spoken ;  the  cold,  hard 
heart  that  yet  had  shut  one  great  love  and  one  great 
faith  in  it,  and  losing  these,  had  broken  and  shown  no 
wound. 

For  what  agony  had  been  like  unto  his  ? 

Since  who  could  render  him  back  on  earth,  or  in  the 


FOLLE-FARINE.  389 

grave,  that  pure  white  soul  he  had  believed  in  once? 
Yea — who  ?     Not  man  ;  not  even  God. 

Therefore  had  he  suffered  without  hope. 

She  went  away  from  the  house  ^ind  down  the  stairs, 
and  out  into  the  ruddy  noon.  She  took  her  way  by  in- 
stinct to  the  orchard,  and  there  sat  down  upon  a  moss- 
grown  stone  within  the  shadow  of  the  leaves. 

All  sense  was  deadened  in  her  under  a  deep  unutterable 
pity. 

From  where  she  sat  she  could  see  the  wicket  window, 
the  gabled  end  of  the  chamber,  and  where  the  linnet  sang, 
and  the  yellow  fruit  of  the  pear-tree  swung.  All  about 
was  the  drowsy  hot  weather  of  the  fruit  harvest ;  the 
murmur  of  bees ;  the  sweep  of  the  boughs  in  the  water. 

Never,  in  all  the  years  that  they  had  dwelt  together 
beneath  one  roof,  had  any  good  word  or  fair  glance  been 
given  her;  he  had  nourished  her  on  bitterness,  and  for 
his  wage  paid  her  a  curse.  Yet  her  heart  was  sore  for 
him;  and  judged  him  without  hatred. 

All  things  seemed  clear  to  her,  now  that  a  human  love 
had  reached  her;  and  this  man  also,  having  loved  greatly 
and  been  betrayed,  became  sanctified  in  her  sight. 

She  forgot  his  brutality,  his  avarice,  his  hatred ;  she 
remembered  only  that  he  had  loved,  and  in  his  love  been 
fooled,  and  so  had  lost  his  faith  in  God  and  man,  and  had 
thus  staggered  wretchedly  down  the  darkness  of  his  life, 
hating  himself  and  every  other,  and  hurting  every  other 
human  thing  that  touched  him,  and  crying  ever  in  his 
blindness,  "  0  Lord,  I  believe,  help  thou  mine  unbelief  I" 

And  now  he  was  dead. 

What  did  it  matter? 

Whether  any  soul  of  his  lived  again,  or  whether  body 
and  mind  both  died  forever,  what  would  it  benefit  all 
those  whom  he  had  slain  ? — the  little  fair  birds,  poisoned 
in  their  song ;  the  little  sickly  children,  starved  in  the 
long  winters  ;  the  miserable  women,  hunted  to  their  graves 
for  some  small  debt  of  fuel  or  bread ;  the  wretched  poor, 
mocked  in  their  famine  by  his  greed  and  gain  ? 

It  had  been  woe  for  him  that  his  loved  had  wronged 
him,  and  turned  the  hard  excellence  of  his  life  to  stone : 
but  none  the  less  had  it  been  woe  to  them  to  fall  and 

33* 


390  FOLLE-FARINE. 

perish,  because  his  hand  would  never  spare,  his  heart 
would  never  soften. 

Her  heart  was  sick  with  the  cold,  bitter,  and  inexorable 
law,  which  had  let  this  man  drag  out  his  seventy  years, 
cursing  and  being  cursed  ;  and  lose  all  things  for  a  dream 
of  God ;  and  then  at  the  last,  upon  his  death-bed,  know 
that  dream  likewise  to  be  false. 

"  It  is  so  cruel !  It  is  so  cruel  1"  she  muttered,  where 
she  sat  with  dry  eyes  in  the  shade  of  the  leaves,  looking 
at  that  window  where  death  was.  / 

And  she  had  reason. 

For  there  is  nothing  so  cruel  in  life  as  a  Faith ; — the 
Faith,  whatever  its  name  may  be,  that  draws  a  man  on 
all  his  years  through,  on  one  narrow  path,  by  one  tremu- 
lous light,  and  then  at  the  last,  with  a  laugh,  drowns 
him. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


The  summer  day  went  by.  No  one  sought  her.  She 
did  not  leave  the  precincts  of  the  still  mill-gardens  ;  a  sort 
of  secrecy  and  stillness  seemed  to  bind  her  footsteps  there, 
and  she  dreaded  to  venture  forth,  lest  she  should  meet 
the  eyes  of  Arslan. 

The  notary  had  put  seals  upon  all  the  cupboards  and 
desks.  Two  hired  watchers  sat  in  the  little  darkened  room 
above.  Some  tapers  burned  beside  his  bed.  The  great  clock 
ticked  heavily.  All  the  house  was  closed.  Without  burned 
the  great  roses  of  the  late  summer,  and  the  scorch  of  a  cloud- 
less sun.  The  wheels  of  the  mill  stood  still.  People  came 
and  went ;  many  women  among  them.  The  death  of  the 
miller  of  Ypres  was  a  shock  to  all  his  countryside.  There 
was  scarce  a  face  that  did  not  lighten,  as  the  peasants 
going  home  at  the  evening  met  one  another  in  the  mellow 
fields,  and  called  across,  "  Hast  heard  ?  Flamma  is  dead 
— at  last." 

No  woman  came  across  the  meadows  with  a  little  can- 
dle, and  kneeled  down  by  his  body  and  wept  and  blessed 


FOLLE-FARINE.  391 

the  stiff  and  withered  hands  for  the  good  that  they  had 
wrought,  and  for  the  gifts  that  they  had  given. 

The  hot  day-hours  stole  slowly  by ;  all  was  noiseless 
there  where  she  sat,  lost  in  the  stupefied  pain  of  her 
thoughts,  in  the  deep  shadow  of  the  leaves,  where  the  first 
breath  of  the  autumn  had  gilded  them  and  varied  them,  here 
and  there,  with  streaks  of  red. 

No  one  saw  her ;  no  one  remembered  her ;  no  one  came 
to  her.  She  was  left  in  peace,  such  peace  as  is  the  lot  of 
those  for  whose  sigh  no  human  ear  is  open,  for  whose  need 
no  human  hand  is  stretched.  Once  indeed  at  noonday,  the 
old  serving-woman  sought  her,  and  had  forced  on  her 
some  simple  meal  of  crusts  and  eggs. 

"  For  who  can  tell  ?"  the  shrewd  old  Norway  crone 
thought  to  herself, — "who  can  tell  ?  She  may  get  all  the 
treasure  :  who  knows  ?  And  if  so,  it  will  be  best  to  have 
been  a  little  good  to  her  this  day,  and  to  seem  as  if  one 
had  forgiven  about  the  chain  of  coins." 

For  Fitchou,  like  the  world  at  large,  would  pardon 
offenses,  if  for  pardon  she  saw  a  sure  profit  in  gold. 

"  Who  will  he  have  left  all  the  wealth  to,  think  you  ?" 
the  old  peasant  muttered,  with  a  cunning  glitter  in  her 
sunken  eyes,  standing  by  her  at  noon,  in  the  solitude, 
where  the  orchards  touched  the  mill-stream. 

"  The  wealth, — whose  wealth  ?"  Folle-Farine  echoed 
the  word  stupidly.  She  had  had  no  thought  of  the 
hoarded  savings  of  that  long  life  of  theft,  and  of  oppres- 
sion. She  had  had  no  remembrance  of  any  possible  inher- 
itance which  might  accrue  to  her  by  this  sudden  death. 
She  had  been  too  long  his  goaded  and  galled  slave  to  be 
able  to  imagine  herself  his  heir. 

"  Ay,  his  wealth,"  answered  the  woman,  standing 
against  the  water  with  her  wooden  shoes  deep  in  dock- 
leaves  and  grass,  gazing,  with  a  curious  eager  grasping 
greed  in  her  eyes,  at  the  creature  whom  she  had  always 
done  her  best  to  thwart,  to  hurt,  to  starve  and  to  slander. 
"  Ay,  his  wealth.  You  who  look  so  sharp  after  your 
bits  of  heathen  coins,  cannot  for  sure  pretend  to  forget 
the  value  he  must  have  laid  by,  living  as  he  has  lived  all 
the  days  from  his  youth  upward.  There  must  be  a  rare 
mass  of  "gold  hid  away  somewhere  or  another — the  notary 


392  FOLLE-FARINE. 

knows,  I  suppose — it  is  all  in  the  place,  that  I  am  sure. 
He  was  too  wise  ever  to  trust  money  far  from  home ;  he 
knew  well  it  was  a  gad-about,  that  once  you  part  with 
never  comes  back  to  you.  It  must  be  all  in  the  secret 
places  ;  in  the  thatch,  under  the  hearthstone,  in  the  rafters, 
under  the  bricks.  And,  maybe,  there  will  be  quite  a  for- 
tune. He  had  so  much,  and  he  lived  so  near.  Where 
think  you  it  will  go  ?" 

A  faint  bitter  smile  flickered  a  moment  over  Folle- 
Farine's  mouth. 

M  It  should  go  to  the  poor.  It  belongs  to  them.  It 
was  all  coined  out  of  their  hearts  and  their  bodies." 

u  Then  you  have  no  hope  for  yourself: — you  ?" 

"  I  ?" 

She  muttered  the  word  dreamily  ;  and  raised  her  ach- 
ing eyelids,  and  stared  in  stupefaction  at  the  old,  haggard, 
dark,  ravenous  face  of  Pitchou. 

11  Pshaw  I  You  cannot  cheat  me  that  way,"  said  the 
woman,  moving  away  through  the  orchard  branches, 
muttering  to  herself.  "  As  if  a  thing  of  hell  like  you 
ever  served  like  a  slave  all  these  years,  on  any  other 
hope  than  the  hope  of  the  gold  !  Well, — as  for  me, — I 
never  pretend  to  lie  in  that  fashion.  If  it  had  not  been 
for  the  hope  of  a  share  in  the  gold,  I  would  never  have 
eaten  for  seventeen  years  the  old  wretch's  mouldy  crusts 
and  lentil-washings." 

She  hobbled,  grumbling  on  her  way  back  to  the  house, 
through  the  russet  shadows  and  the  glowing  gold  of  the 
orchards. 

Folle-Farine  sat  by  the  water,  musing  on  the  future 
which  had  opened  to  her  with  the  woman's  words  of 
greed. 

Before  another  day  had  sped,  it  was  possible, — so  even 
said  one  who  hated  her,  and  begrudged  her  every  bit  and 
drop  that  she  had  taken  at  the  miser's  board, — possible 
that  she  would  enter  into  the  heritage  of  all  that  this 
long  life,  spent  in  rapacious  greed  and  gain,  had  gathered 
together. 

One  night  earlier,  paradise  itself  would  have  seemed 
to  open  before  her  with  such  a  hope ;  for  she  would  have 
hastened  to  the  feet  of  Arslan,  and  there  poured  all  treasure 


FOLLE-FARINE.  393 

that  chance  might  have  given  her,  and  would  have  cried 
out  of  the  fullness  of  her  heart,  "  Take,  enjoy,  be  free,  do 
as  you  will.  So  that  you  make  the  world  of  men  own 
your  greatness,  I  will  live  as  a  beggar  all  the  years'  of 
my  life,  and  think  myself  richer  than  kings  !" 

But  now,  what  use  would  it  be,  though  she  were  called 
to  an  empire  ?  She  would  not  dare  to  say  to  him,  as  a 
day  earlier  she  would  have  said  with  her  first  breath, 
"All  that  is  mine  is  thine." 

She  would  not  even  dare  to  give  him  all  and  creep 
away  unseen,  unthanked,  unhonored  into  obscurity  and 
oblivion,  for  had  he  not  said,  "  You  have  no  right  to  bur- 
den me  with  debt"  ? 

Yet  as  she  sat  there  lonely  among  the  grasses,  with 
the  great  mill-wheels  at  rest  in  the  water,  and  the  swal- 
lows skimming  the  surface  that  was  freed  from  the  churn 
and  the  foam  of  the  wheels,  as  though  the  day  of  Flamma's 
death  had  been  a  saint's  day,  the  fancy  which  had  been 
set  so  suddenly  before  her,  dazzled  her,  aud  her  aching 
brain  and  her  sick  despair  could  not  choose  but  play  with 
it  despite  themselves. 

If  the  fortune  of  Flamma  came  to  her,  it  might  be 
possible,  she  thought,  to  spend  it  so  as  to  release  him 
from  his  bondage,  without  knowledge  of  his  own ;  so  to 
fashion  with  it  a  golden  temple  and  a  golden  throne  for 
the  works  of  his  hand,  that  the  world,  which  as  they  all 
said  worshiped  gold,  should  be  forced  to  gaze  in  homage 
on  the  creations  of  his  mind  and  hand. 

And  yet  he  had  said  greater  shame  there  could  come 
to  no  man,  than  to  rise  by  the  aid  of  a  woman.  The 
apple  of  life,  however  sweet  and  fair  in  its  color  and 
savor,  would  be  as  poison  in  his  mouth  if  her  hand  held 
it.  That  she  knew,  and  in  the  humility  of  her  great  and 
reverent  love,  she  submitted  without  question  to  its  cruelty. 

At  night  she  went  within  to  break  her  fast,  and  try  to 
rest  a  little.  The  old  peasant  woman  served  her  silently, 
and  for  the  first  time  willingly.  "Who  can  say?"  the 
Norman  thought  to  herself, — "who  can  say?  She  may 
yet  get  it  all,  who  knows  ?" 

At  night  as  she  slept,  Pitchou  peered  at  her,  shading 
the  light  from  her  eyes. 


394  FOLLE-FARINE. 

M  If  only  I  could  know  who  gets  the  gold  ?"  she  mut- 
tered. Her  sole  thought  was  the  money  ;  the  money  that 
the  notary  held  under  his  lock  and  seal.  She  wished  now 
that  she  had  dealt  better  with  the  girl  sometimes ;  it 
would  have  been  safer,  and  it  could  have  done  no  harm. 

With  earliest  dawn  Folle-Farine  fled  again  to  the  refuge 
of  the  wood.  She  shunned,  with  the  terror  of  a  hunted 
doe,  the  sight  of  people  coming  and  going,  the  priests 
and  the  gossips,  the  sights  and  the  sounds,  and  none 
sought  her. 

All  the  day  through  she  wandered  in  the  cool  dewy 
orchard-ways. 

Beyond  the  walls  of  the  foliage,  she  saw  the  shrouded 
window,  the  flash  of  the  crucifix,  the  throngs  of  the 
mourners,  the  glisten  of  the  white  robes.  She  heard  the 
deep  sonorous  swelling  of  the  chants;  she  saw  the* little 
procession  come  out  from  the  doorway  and  cross  the  old 
•wooden  bridge,  and  go  slowly  through  the  sunlight  of 
the  meadows.  Many  of  the  people  followed,  singing, 
and  bearing  tapers ;  for  he  who  was  dead  had  stood  well 
with  the  Church,  and  from  such  there  still  issues  for  the 
living  a  fair  savor. 

No  one  came  to  her.  What  had  they  to  do  with  her, — 
a  creature  unbaptized,  and  an  outcast  ? 

She  watched  the  little  line  fade  away,  over  the  green 
and  golden  glory  of  the  fields. 

She  did  not  think  of  herself — since  Arslan  had  looked 
at  her,  in  his  merciless  scorn,  she  had  had  neither  past 
nor  future. 

It  did  not  even  occur  to  her  that  her  home  would  be 
in  this  place  no  longer;  it  was  as  natural  to  her  as  its 
burrow  to  the  cony,  its  hole  to  the  fox.  It  did  not  occur 
to  her  that  the  death  of  this  her  tyrant  could  not  but 
make  some  sudden  and  startling  change  in  all  her  ways 
and  fortune. 

She  waited  in  the  woods  all  day ;  it  was  so  strange  a 
sense  to  her  to  be  free  of  the  bitter  bondage  that  had  lain 
on  her  life  so  long  ;  she  could  not  at  once  arise  and  under- 
stand the  meaning  of  her  freedom  ;  she  was  like  a  captive 
soldier,  who  has  dragged  the  cannon-ball  so  long,  that 
when  it  is  loosened  from  his  limb,  it  feels  strange,  and  his 
step  sounds  uucompanioned. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  395 

She  was  thankful,  too,  for  the  tortured  beasts,  and  the 
hunted  birds ;  she  fed  them  and  looked  in  their  gentle 
eyes,  and  told  them  that  they  were  free.  But  in  her  own 
heart  one  vain  wish,  only,  ached — she  thought  always: 

"If  only  I  might  die  for  him, — as  the  reed  for  the 
god." 

The  people  returned,  and  then  after  awhile  all  went 
forth  again ;  they  and  their  priests  with  them.  The 
place  was  left  alone.  The  old  solitude  had  come  upon  it ; 
the  sound  of  the  wood-dove  only  filled  the  quiet. 

The  day  grew  on ;  in  the  orchards  it  was  already  twi- 
light, whilst  on  the  waters  and  in  the  open  lands  farther 
away  the  sun  was  bright.  There  was  a  wicket  close  by 
under  the  boughs;  a  bridle-path  ran  by,  moss-grown,  and 
little  used,  but  leading  from  the  public  road  beyond. 

From  the  gleam  of  the  twisted  fruit  trees  a  low  flute- 
like noise  came  to  her  ear  in  the  shadow  of  the  solitude. 

"  Folle-Farine^ — I  go  on  your  errand.  If  you  repent, 
there  is  time  yet  to  stay  me.  Say — do  you  bid  me  still 
set  your  Norse-god  free  from  the  Cave  of  the  Snakes  }n 

She,  startled,  looked  up  into  the  roofing  of  the  thick 
foliage  ;  she  saw  shining  on  her  with  a  quiet  smile  the 
eyes  which  she  had  likened  to  the  eyes  of  the  Red  Mouse. 
They  scanned  her  gravely  and  curiously  :  they  noted  the 
change  in  her  since  the  last  sun  had  set. 

"  What  did  he  say  to  you  for  your  gold  ?"  the  old  man 
asked. 

She  was  silent;  the  blood  of  an  intolerable  shame 
burned  in  her  face ;  she  had  not  thought  that  she  had 
betrayed  her  motive  in  seeking  a  price  for  her  chain  of 
coins. 

He  laughed  a  little  softly. 

"  Ah  !  You  fancied  I  did  not  know  your  design  when 
you  came  so  bravely  to  sell  your  Moorish  dancing-gear. 
Oh,  Folle-Farine  ! — female  things,  with  eyes  like  yours, 
must  never  hope  to  keep  a  secret !" 

She  never  answered  ;  she  had  risen  and  stood  rooted 
to  the  ground,  her  head  hung  down,  her  breast  heaving, 
the  blood  coming  and  going  in  her  intolerable  pain,  as 
though  she  flushed  and  froze  under  a  surgeon's  probe. 

"  What  did  he  say  to  you  ?"  pursued  her  questioner. 


396  FOLLE-FA  R1NE. 

11  There  should  be  but  one  language  possible  from  a  man 
of  his  years  to  a  woman  of  yours." 

She  lifted  her  eyes  and  spoke  at  last: 

''He  said  that  I  did  him  a  foul  shame :  the  gold  lies  in 
the  sands  of  the  river." 

She  was  strong  to  speak  the  truth,  inflexibly,  to  the 
full ;  for  its  degradation  to  herself  she  knew  was  honor 
to  the  absent.  It  showed  him  strong  and  cold  and  un- 
tempted,  preferring  famine  and  neglect  and  misery  to  any 
debt  or  burden  of  a  service  done. 

The  old  man,  leaning  on  the  wooden  bar  of  the  gate 
among  the  leaves,  looked  at  her  long  and  thoughtfully. 

"  He  would  not  take  your  poor  little  pieces  ?  You 
mean  that  ?" 

She  gave  a  sign  of  assent. 

"  That  was  a  poor  reward  to  you,  Folle-Farine  I"  Her 
lips  grew  white  and  shut  together. 

"Mine  was  the  fault,  the  folly.  He  was  right,  no 
doubt." 

"  You  are  very  royal.  I  think  your  northern  god  was 
only  thus  cold  because  your  gift  was  such  a  little  one, 
Eolle-Farine." 

A  strong  light  flashed  on  him  from  her  eyes. 

"  It  would  have  been  the  same  if  I  had  offered  him  an 
empire." 

"  You  are  so  sure  ?  Does  he  hate  you,  then — this  god 
of  yours  ?" 

She  quivered  from  head  to  foot;  but  her  courage 
would  not  yield,  her  faith  would  not  be  turned. 

"  Need  a  man  hate  the  dust  under  his  foot?"  she  mut- 
tered in  her  teeth;  "because  it  is  a  thing  too  lowly  for 
him  to  think  of  as  he  walks." 

"  You  are  very  truthful." 

She  was  silent;  standing  there  in  the  shadow  of  the 
great  mill-timbers. 

The  old  man  watched'her  with  calm  approving  eyes, 
as  he  might  have  watched  a  statue  of  bronze.  He  was 
a  great  man,  a  man  of  much  wealth,  of  wide  power,  of 
boundless  self-indulgence,  of  a  keen  serene  wisdom,  which 
made  his  passions  docile  and  ministers  to  his  pleasure, 
and  never  allowed  them  any  mastery  over  himself.     He 


FOLLE-FARINE.  397 

was  studying  the  shape  of  her  limbs,  the  hues  of  her 
skin,  the  lofty  slender  stature  of  her,  and  the  cloud  of 
her  hair  that  was  like  the  golden  gleaming  mane  of  a 
young  desert  mare. 

14  All  these  in  Paris,"  he  was  thinking.  "  Just  as  she  is, 
with  just  the  same  bare  feet  and  limbs,  the  same  un- 
trammeled  gait,  the  same  flash  of  scarlet  round  her  loins, 
only  to  the  linen  tunic  a  hem  of  gold,  and  on  the  breast 
a  flame  of  opals.  Paris  would  say  that  even  I  had  never 
in  my  many  years  done  better.  The  poor  barbarian  ! 
she  sells  her  little  brazen  sequins,  and  thinks  them  her 
only  treasure,  whilst  she  has  all  that  1  Is  Arslan  blind, 
or  is  he  only  tired  ?" 

But  he  spake  none  of  his  thoughts  aloud.  He  was  too 
wary  to  scare  the  prey  he  meant  to  secure  with  any 
screams  of  the  sped  arrow,  or  any  sight  of  the  curled 
lasso. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  simply,  "  I  understand ;  your  eagle, 
in  recompense  for  your  endeavors  to  set  him  free,  only 
tears  your  heart  with  his  talons?  It  is  the  way  of 
eagles.  He  has  wounded  you  sorely.  And  the  wound 
will  bleed  many  a  day." 

She  lifted  her  head. 

11  Have  I  complained  ? — have  I  asked  your  pity,  or  any 
man's  ?" 

"  Oh,  no,  you  are  very  strong !  So  is  a  lioness ;  but 
she  dies  of  a  man's  wound  sometimes.  He  has  been 
very  base  to  you." 

"  He  has  done  as  he  thought  it  right  to  do.  Who 
shall  lay  blame  on  him  for  that  ?" 

"  Your  loyalty  says  so  ;  you  are  very  brave,  no  doubt. 
But  tell  me,  do  you  still  wish  this  man,  who  wounds  you 
so  cruelly,  set  free  ?" 

"Yes." 

"What,  still?" 

"Why  not?" 

"  Why  not  ?  Only  this :  that  once  he  is  let  loose  your 
very  memory  will  be  shaken  from  his  thoughts  as  the  dust 
of  the  summer,  to  which  you  liken  yourself,  is  shaken  from 
his  feet !" 

"No  doubt." 

34 


398  FOLLE-FARINE. 

She  thought  she  did  not  let  him  see  the  agony  he  dealt 
her ;  she  stood  unflinching,  her  hands  crossed  upon  her 
breast,  her  head  drooped,  her  eyes  looking  far  from  him 
to  where  the  fading  sunlight  gleamed  still  upon  the  reaches 
.of  the  river. 

11  No  doubt,"  he  echoed.  "  And  yet  I  think  you  hardly 
understand.  This  man  is  a  great  artist.  He  has  a  great 
destiny,  if  he  once  can  gain  the  eye  and  the  ear  of  the 
world.  The  world  will  fear  him,  and  curse  him  always  ; 
he  is  very  merciless  to  it ;  but  if  he  once  conquer  fame, 
that  fame  will  be  one  to  last  as  long  as  the  earth  lasts. 
That  I  believe.  Well,  give  this  man  what  he  longs  for 
and  strives  for,  a  life  in  his  fame  which  shall  not  die  so 
long  as  men  have  breath  to  speak  of  art.  What  will  you 
be  in  that  great  drunken  dream  of  his,  if  once  we  make  it 
true  for  him  ?  Not  even  a  remembrance,  Folle-Farine. 
For  though  you  have  fancied  that  you,  by  your  beauty, 
would  at  least  abide  upon  his  canvas,  and  so  go  on  to  im- 
mortality with  his  works  and  name,  you  seem  not  to  know 
that  so  much  also  will  do  any  mime  who  lets  herself  for 
hire  on  a  tavern  stage,  or  any  starveling  who  makes  her 
daily  bread  by  giving  her  face  and  form  to  a  painter's 
gaze.  Child  !  what  you  have  thought  noble,  men  and 
women  have  decreed  one  of  the  vilest  means  by  which  a 
creature  traffics  in  her  charms.  The  first  lithe-limbed 
model  that  he  finds  in  the  cities  will  displace  you  on  his 
canvas  and  in  his  memory.  Shall  he  go  free — to  forget 
you  V 

She  listened  dumbly ;  her  attitude  unchanging,  as  she 
had  stood  in  other  days,  under  the  shadow  of  the  boughs, 
to  receive  the  stripes  of  her  master. 

"  lie  shall  be  free — to  forget  me." 

The  words  were  barely  audible,  but  they  were  inflexible, 
as  they  were  echoed  through  her  locked  teeth. 

The  eyes  of  her  tormentor  watched  her  with  a  wonder- 
ing admiration;  yet  he  could  not  resist  the  pleasure  of  an 
added  cruelty,  as  the  men  of  the  torture-chambers  of  old 
strained  once  more  the  fair  fettered  form  of  a  female  cap- 
tive, that  they  might  see  a  little  longer  those  bright  limbs 
quiver,  and  those  bare  nerves  heave. 

"  Well ;  be  it  so  if  you  will  it.     Only  think  long  enough. 


FOL I E-FA  RINE.  399 

For  strong  though  you  are,  you  are  also  weak ;  for  you 
are  of  your  mother's  sex,  Folle-Farine.  You  may  repent. 
Think*  well.  You  are  no  more  to  him  than  your  eponym, 
the  mill-dust.  You  have  said  so  to  yourself.  But  you 
are  beautiful  in  your  barbarism  ;  and  here  you  are  always 
near  him ;  and  with  a  man  who  has  no  gold  to  give,  a 
woman  need  have  few  rivals  to  fear.  If  his  heart  eat 
itself  out  here  in  solitude,  soon  or  late  he  will  be  yours, 
Folle-Farine.  A  man,  be  he  what  he  will,  cannot  live 
long  without  some  love,  more  or  less,  for  some  woman. 
A  little  while,  and  your  Norse-god  alone  here,  disap- 
pointed, embittered,  friendless,  galled  by  poverty,  and 
powerless  to  escape,  will  turn  to  you,  and  find  a  sweetness 
on  your  lips,  a  balm  in  your  embrace,  an  opium  draught 
for  an  hour,  at  least,  in  that  wonderful  beauty  of  yours. 
A  woman  who  is  beautiful,  and  who  has  youth,  and  who 
has  passion,  need  never  fail  to  make  a  love-light  beam  in 
the  eyes  of  a  man,  if  only  she  know  how  to  wait,  if  only 
she  be  the  sole  blossom  that  grows  in  his  pathway,  the 
sole  fruit  within  reach  of  his  hands.  Keep  him  here,  and 
soon  or  late,  out  of  sheer  despair  of  any  other  paradise, 
he  will  make  his  paradise  in  your  breast.  Do  you  doubt  ? 
Child,  I  have  known  the  world  many  years,  but  this  one 
thing  1  have  ever  known  to  be  stronger  than  any  strength 
a  man  can  bring  against  it  to  withstand  it — this  one  thing 
which  fate  has  given  you,  the  bodily  beauty  of  a  woman." 

His  voice  ceased  softly  in  the  twilight — this  voice  of 
Mephistopheles — which  tempted  her  but  for  the  sheer 
sole  pleasure  of  straining  this  strength  to  see  if  it  should 
break — of  deriding  this  faith  to  see  if  it  would  bend — of 
alluring  this  soul  to  see  if  it  would  fall. 

She  stood  abased  in  a  piteous  shame — the  shame  that 
any  man  should  thus  read  her  heart,  which  seemed  to 
burn  and  wither  up  all  liberty,  all  innocence,  all  pride  in 
her,  and  leave  her  a  thing  too  utterly  debased  to  bear  the 
gaze  of  any  human  eyes, — to  bear  the  light  of  any  noon- 
day sun. 

And  yet  the  terrible  sweetness  of  the  words  tempted 
her  with  such  subtle  force :  the  passions  of  a  fierce,  amor- 
ous race  ran  in  her  blood — the  ardor  and  the  liberty  of 
an  outlawed  and  sensual  people  were  bred  with  her  flesh 


400  FOLLE-FARINE. 

and  blood :  to  have  been  the  passion-toy  of  the  man  she 
loved  for  one  single  day, — to  have  felt  for  one  brief  sum- 
mer hour  his  arms  hold  her  and  his  kisses  answer  hers, 
she  would  have  consented  to  die  a  hundred  deaths  in 
uttermost  tortures  when  the  morrow  should  have  dawned, 
and  would  have  died  rejoicing,  crying  to  the  last  breath, — 

"  I  havQ  lived:  it  is  enough  1" 

He  might  be  hers  I  The  mere  thought,  uttered  in  an- 
other's voice,  thrilled  through  her  with  a  tumultuous 
ecstasy,  hot  as  flame,  potent  as  wine. 

He  might  be  hers — all  her  own — each  pulse  of  his  heart 
echoing  hers,  each  breath  of  his  lips  spent  on  her  own. 
He  might  be  hers  ! — she  hid  her  face  upon  her  hands ;  a 
million  tongues  of  fire  seemed  to  curl  about  her  and  lap 
her  life.     The  temptation  was  stronger  than  her  strength. 

She  was  a  friendless,  loveless,  nameless  thing,  and  she 
had  but  one  idolatry  and  one  passion,  and  for  this  joy 
that  they  set  to  her  lips  she  would  have  given  her  body 
and  her  soul.  Her  soul — if  the  gods  and  man  allowed 
her  one — her  soul  and  all  her  life,  mortal  and  immortal, 
for  one  single  day  of  Arslan's  love.  Her  soul,  forever, 
to  any  hell  they  would — but  his  ? 

Not  for  this  had  she  sold  her  life  to  the  gods — not  for 
this ;  not  for  the  rapture  of  passion,  the  trance  of  the 
senses,  the  heaven  of  self. 

What  she  had  sworn  to  them,  if  they  saved  him,  was 
forever  to  forget  in  him  herself,  to  suffer  dumbly  for  him, 
and,  whensoever  they  would,  in  his  stead  to  die. 

"  Choose,"  said  the  soft  wooing  voice  of  her  tempter, 
while  his  gaze  smiled  on  her  through  the  twilight.  "  Shall 
he  consume  his  heart  here  in  solitude  till  he  loves  you 
perforce,  or  shall  he  go  free  among  the  cities  of  men,  to 
remember  you  no  more  than  he  remembers  the  reeds  by 
the  river?" 

The  reeds  by  the  river. 

The  chance  words  that  he  used,  by  the  mere  hazards  of 
speech,  cut  the  bonds  of  passion  which  were  binding  so 
closely  about  her.  As  the  river-reed  to  the  god,  so  she 
had  thought  that  her  brief  span  of  life  might  be  to  the 
immortality  of  his.  Was  this  the  fulfilling  of  her  faith, — 
to  hold  him  here  with  his  strength  in  chains,  and  his 


FOLLE-FARWE.  401 

genius  perishing  in  darkness,  that  she,  the  thing  of  an 
hour,  might  know  delight  in  the  reluctant  love,  in  the 
wearied  embrace,  of  a  man  heart-sick  and  heart-broken  ? 

She  shook  the  deadly  sweetness  of  the  beguilement  off 
her  as  she  would  have  shaken  an  asp's  coils  off  her  wrist, 
and  rose  against  it,  and  was  once  more  strong. 

"  What  have  you  to  do  with  me  ?"  she  muttered,  feebly, 
while  the  fierce  glare  of  her  eyes  burned  through  the 
gloom  of  the  leaves.  "Keep  your  word;  set- him  free. 
His  freedom  let  him  use — as  he  will." 

Then,  ere  he  could  arrest  her  flight,  she  had  plunged 
into  the  depths  of  the  orchards,  and  was  lost  in  their 
flickering  shadows. 

Sartorian  did  not  seek  to  pursue  her.  He  turned  and 
went  thoughtfully  and  slowly  back  by  the  grass-grown 
footpath  through  the  little  wood,  along  by  the  riverside, 
to  the  water-tower.  His  horses  and  his  people  waited 
near,  but  it  suited  him  to  go  thither  on  this  errand  on 
foot  and  alone. 

11  The  Red  Mouse  does  not  dwell  in  that  soul  as  yet. 
That  sublime  unreason — that  grand  barbaric  madness! 
And  yet  both  will  fall  to  gold,  as  that  fruit  falls  to  the 
touch,"  he  thought,  as  he  brushed  a  ripe  yellow  pear  from 
the  shelter  of  the  reddening  leaves,  and  watched  it  drop, 
and  crushed  it  gently  with  his  foot,  and  smiled  as  he  saw 
that  though  so  golden  on  the  rind,  and  so  white  and  so 
fragrant  in  the  flesh,  at  the  core  was  a  rotten  speck,  in 
which  a  little  black  worm  was  twisting. 

He  had  shaken  it  down  from  idleness ;  where  he  left 
it,  crushed  in  the  public  pathway,  a  swarm  of  ants  and 
flies  soon  crawled,  and  flew,  and  fought,  and  fastened, 
and  fed  on  the  fallen  purity,  which  the  winds  had  once 
tossed  up  to  heaven,  and  the  sun  had  once  kissed  into 
bloom. 

****** 

Through  the  orchards,  as  his  footsteps  died  away,  there 
came  a  shrill  scream  on  the  silence,  which  only  the  sighing 
of  the  cushats  had  broken. 

It  was  the  voice  of  the  old  serving-woman,  who  called 
on  her  name  from  the  porch. 

In  the  old  instinct,  born  of  long  obedience,  she  drew 
34* 


402  FOLLE-FARINE. 

herself  wearily  through  the  tangled  ways  of  the  gardens 
and  over  the  threshold  of  the  house. 

She  had  lost  all  remembrance  of  Flamma's  death,  and 
of  the  inheritance  of  his  wealth.  She  only  thought  of 
those  great  and  noble  fruits  of  a  man's  genius  which  she 
,  bad  given  up  all  to  save;  she  only  thought  ceaselessly, 
in  the  sickness  of  her  heart,  "Will  he  forget? — forget 
quite — when  he  is  free  ?" 

The  peasant  standing  in  the  porch  with  arms  akimbo, 
and  the  lean  cat  rubbing  ravenous  sides  against  her 
wooden  shoes,  peered  forth  from  under  the  rich  red  leaves 
of  the  creepers  that  shrouded  the  pointed  roof  of  the  door- 
way. 

Her  wrinkled  face  was  full  of  malignity ;  her  toothless 
mouth  smiled ;  her  eyes  were  full  of  a  greedy  triumph. 
Before  her  was  the  shady,  quiet,  leafy  garden,  with  the 
water  running  clear  beneath  the  branches ;  behind  her 
was  the  kitchen,  with  its  floor  of  tiles,  its  strings  of  food, 
its  wood-piled  hearth,  its  crucifix,  and  its  images  of  saints. 

She  looked  at  the  tired  limbs  of  the  creature  whom  she 
had  always  hated  for  her  beauty  and  her  youth  ;  at  the 
droop  of  the  proud  head,  at  the  pain  and  the  exhaustion 
which  every  line  of  the  face  and  the  form  spoke  so 
plainly ;  at  the  eyes  which  burned  so  strangely  as  she 
came  through  the  gray,  pure  air,  and  yet  had  such  a  look 
in  them  of  sightlessness  and  stupor. 

"  She  has  been  told,"  thought  the  old  serving-woman. 
"  She  has  been  told,  and  her  heart  breaks  for  the  gold." 

The  thought  was  sweet  to  her  —  precious  with  the 
preciousness  of  vengeance. 

"  Come  within,"  she  said,  with  a  grim  smile  about  her 
mouth.  "I  will  give  thee  a  crust  and  a  drink  of  milk. 
None  shall  say  I  cannot  act  like  a  Christian;  and  to- 
night I  will  let  thee  rest  here  in  the  loft,  but  no  longer. 
With  the  break  of  day  thou  shalt  tramp.  We  are  Chris- 
tians here." 

Polle-Farine  looked  at  her  with  blind  eyes,  compre- 
hending nothing  that  she  spoke. 

"  You  called  me  ?"  she  asked,  the  old  mechanical  for- 
mula of  servitude  coming  to  her  lips  by  sheer  unconscious 
instinct. 


FOLLE-FA  RINE.  403 

"Ay,  I  called.  I  would  have  thee  to  know  that  I  am 
mistress  here  now  ;  and  I  will  have  no  vile  things  gad 
about  in  the  night  so  long  as  they  eat  of  my  bread.  To- 
night thou  shalt  rest  here,  I  say ;  so  much  will  I  do  for 
sake  of  thy  mother,  though  she  was  a  foul  light  o'  love, 
when  all  men  deemed  her  a  saint ;  but  to-morrow  thou 
shalt  tramp.  Such  hell-spawn  as  thou  art  mayst  not  lie 
on  a  bed  of  Holy  Church." 

Folle-Farine  gazed  at  her,  confused  and  still  not  com- 
prehending ;  scarcely  awake  to  the  voice  which  thus  ad- 
jured her ;  all  her  strength  spent  and  bruised,  after  the 
struggle  of  the  temptation  which  had  assailed  her. 

"You  mean,"  she  muttered,  "you  mean What 

would  you  tell  me  ?     I  do  not  know." 

The  familiar  place  reeled  around  her.  The  saints  and 
the  satyrs  on  the  carved  gables  grinned  on  her  horribly. 
The  yellow  house-leek  on  the  roof  seemed  to  her  so  much 
gold,  which  had  a  tongue,  and  muttered,  "You  prate  of 
the  soul.     I  alone  am  the  soul  of  the  world." 

All  the  green,  shadowy,  tranquil  ways  grew  strange  to 
her;  the  earth  shook  under  her  feet ;  the  heavens  circled 

around  her  : and  Pitchou,  looking  on  her,  thought  that 

she  was  stunned  by  the  loss  of  the  miser's  treasure ! 

She  I  in  whose  whole  burning  veins  there  ran  only  one 
passion,  in  whose  crushed  brain  there  was  only  one  thought 
— "Will  he  forget — forget  quite — when  he  is  free?" 

The  old  woman  stretched  her  head  forward,  and  cackled 
out  eager,  hissing,  tumultuous  words: 

"  Hast  not  heard  ?  No  ?  Well,  see,  then.  Some  said 
you  should  be  sent  for,  but  the  priest  and  I  said  No. 
Neither  Law  nor  Church  count  the  love-begotten.  Flamma 
died  worth  forty  thousand  francs,  set  aside  all  his  land  and 
household  things.  God  rest  his  soul !  He  was  a  man. 
He  forgot  my  faithful  service,  true,  but  the  good  almoner 
will  remember  all  that  to  me.  Forty  thousand  francs  ! 
What  a  man  !  And  hardly  a  nettle  boiled  in  oil  would  he 
eat  some  days  together.  Where  does  this  money  go — eh, 
eh  ?     Canst  guess  ?" 

"Go?" 

Pitchou  watched  her  grimly,  and  laughed  aloud : 

"Ah,  ah!    I  know.    So  you  dared  to  hope,  too  ?    Oh, 


404  FOLLE-FARWE. 

fool  !  what  thing  did  ever  he  hate  as  he  hated  your 
shadow  on  the  wall  ?  The  money,  and  the  lands,  and  the 
things — every  coin,  every  inch,  every  crumb — is  willed 
away  to  the  Church,  to  the  holy  chapter  in  the  town 
yonder,  to  hold  for  the  will  of  God  and  the  glory  of  his 
kingdom.  And  masses  will  be  said  for  his  soul,  daily,  in 
the  cathedral ;  and  the  gracious  almoner  has  as  good  as 
said  that  the  mill  shall  be  let  to  Francvron,  the  baker,  who 
is  old  and  has  no  women  to  his  house ;  and  that  I  shall 
dwell  here  and  manage  all  things,  and  rule  Francvron, 
and  end  my  days  in  the  chimney  corner.  And  I  will 
stretch  a  point  and  let  you  lie  in  the  hay  to-night,  but  to- 
rn orrow  you  must  tramp,  for  the  devil's  daughter  and 
Holy  Church  will  scarce  go  to  roost  together." 

Folle-Farine  heard  her  stupidly,  and  stupidly  gazed 
around  ;  she  did  not  understand.  She  had  never  had  any 
other  home,  and,  in  a  manner,  even  in  the  apathy  of  a  far 
greater  woe,  she  clove  to  this  place  ;  to  its  familiarity,  and 
its  silence,  and  its  old  woodland-ways. 

"  Go !" — she  looked  down  through  the  aisles  of  the 
boughs  dreamily  ;  in  a  vague  sense  she  felt  the  sharpness 
of  desolation  that  repulses  the  creature  whom  no  human 
heart  desires,  and  whom  no  human  voice  bids  stay. 

"Yes.  Go  ;  and  that  quickly,"  said  the  peasant  with 
a  sardonic  grin.  "  I  serve  the  Church  now.  It  is  not  for 
me  to  harbor  such  as  thee  ;  nor  is  it  fit  to  take  the  bread 
of  the  poor  and  the  pious  to  feed  lips  as  accursed  as  are 
thine.  Thou  inayst  lie  here  to-night — I  would  not  be 
overharsh — but  tarry  no  longer.  Take  a  sup  and  a  bit, 
and  to  bed.     Dost  hear  ?" 

Folle-Farine,  without  a  word  in  answer,  turned  on  her 
heel  and  left  her. 

The  old  woman  watched  her  shadow  pass  across  the 
threshold,  and  away  down  the  garden-paths  between  the 
green  lines  of  the  clipped  box,  and  vanish  beyond  the  fall 
of  drooping  fig-boughs  and  the  walls  of  ivy  and  of  laurel ; 
then  with  a  chuckle  she  poured  out  her  hot  coffee,  and  sat 
in  her  corner  and  made  her  evening  meal,  well  pleased; 
comfort  was  secured  her  for  the  few  years  which  she 
had  to  live,  and  she  was  revenged  for  the  loss  of  the 
sequins. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  405 

"  How  well  it  is  for  me  that  I  went  to  mass  every 
Saint's-day!"  she  thought,  foreseeing  easy  years  and  plenty 
under  the  rule  of  the  Church  and  of  old  deaf  Francvron, 
the  baker. 

Folle-Farine  mounted  the  wooden  ladder  to  the  hayloft 
which  had  been  her  sleeping-chamber,  there  took  the  little 
linen  and  the  few  other  garments  which  belonged  to  her, 
folded  them  together  in  her  winter  sheepskin,  and  went 
down  the  wooden  steps  once  more,  and  out  of  the  mill- 
garden  across  the  bridge  into  the  woods. 

She  had  no  fixed  purpose  even  for  the  immediate  hour; 
she  had  not  even  a  tangible  thought  for  her  future.  She 
acted  on  sheer  mechanical  impulse,  like  one  who  does 
some  things  unconsciously,  walking  abroad  in  the  trance 
of  sleep.  That  she  was  absolutely  destitute  scarcely 
bore  any  sense  to  her.  She  had  never  realized  that  this 
begrudged  roof  and  scanty  fare,  which  Flamma  had  be- 
stowed on  her,  had,  wretched  though  they  were,  yet  been 
all  the  difference  between  home  and  homelessness — be- 
tween existence  and  starvation. 

She  wandered  on  aimlessly  through  the  woods. 

She  paused  a  moment  on  the  river-sand,  and  turned 
and  looked  back  at  the  mill  and  the  house.  From  where 
she  stood,  she  could  see  its  brown  gables  and  its  peaked 
roof  rising  from  masses  of  orchard-blossom,  white  and 
wide  as  sea-foam  ;  further  round  it,  closed  the  dark  belt 
of  the  sweet  chestnut  woods. 

She  looked ;  and  great  salt  tears  rushed  into  her  hot 
eyes  and  blinded  them. 

She  had  been  hated  by  those  who  dwelt  there,  and  had 
there  known  only  pain,  and  toil,  and  blows,  and  bitter 
words.  And  yet  the  place  itself  was  dear  to  her,  its 
homely  and  simple  look :  its  quiet  garden-ways,  its  dells 
of  leafy  shadow,  its  bright  and  angry  waters,  its  furred 
and  feathered  creatures  that  gave  it  life  and  loveliness, — 
these  had  been  her  consolations  often, — these,  in  a  way, 
she  loved. 

Such  as  it  was,  her  life  had  been  bound  up  with  it; 
and  though  often  its  cool  pale  skies  and  level  lands  had 
been  a  prison  to  her,  yet  her  heart  clove  to  it  in  this 
moment  when  she  left  it — forever.     She  looked  once  at 


400  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

it  long  and  lingeringly;  then  turned  and  went  on  her 
way. 

She  walked  slowly  through  the  cool  evening  shadows, 
while  the  birds  fluttered  about  her  head.  She  did  not 
comprehend  the  terrible"  fate  that  had  befallen  her.  She 
did  not  think  that  it  was  horrible  to  have  no  canopy  but 
the  clear  sky,  and  no  food  but  the  grain  rubbed  from  the 
ripe  wheat-ears. 

The  fever  of  conscious  passion  which  had  been  born  in 
her,  and  the  awe  of  the  lonely  death  that  she  had  wit- 
nessed, were  on  her  too  heavily,  and  with  too  dreamy 
and  delirious  an  absorption,  to  leave  any  room  in  her 
thoughts  for  the  bodily  perils  or  the  bodily  privations  of 
her  fate. 

Some  vague  expectancy  of  some  great  horror,  she 
knew  not  what,  was  on  her.  She  was  as  in  a  trance,  her 
brain  was  giddy,  her  eyes  blind.  Though  she  walked 
straightly,  bearing  her  load  upon  her  head,  on  and  on 
as  through  the  familiar  paths,  she  yet  had  no  goal,  no 
sense  of  what  she  meant  to  do,  or  whither  she  desired 
to  go. 

The  people  were  still  about,  going  from  their  work  in 
the  fields,  and  their  day  at  the  town-market,  to  their 
homesteads  and  huts.  Every  one  of  them  cast  some 
word  at  her.  For  the  news  had  spread  by  sunset  over 
all  the  countryside  that  Flamma's  treasure  was  gone  to 
Holy  Church. 

They  were  spoken  in  idleness,  but  they  were  sharp, 
flouting,  merciless  arrows  of  speech,  that  struck  her 
hardly  as  the  speakers  cast  them,  and  laughed,  and  passed 
by  her.  She  gave  no  sign  that  she  heard,  not  by  so 
much  as  the  quiver  of  a  muscle  or  the  glance  of  an  eye ; 
but  she,  nevertheless,  was  stung  by  them  to  the  core,  and 
her  heart  hardened,  and  her  blood  burned. 

Not  one  of  them,  man  or  boy,  but  made  a  mock  of  her 
as  they  marched  by  through  the  purpling  leaves  or  the 
tall  seed-grasses.  Not  one  of  them,  mother  or  maiden, 
that  gave  a  gentle  look  at  her,  or  paused  to  remember 
that  she  was  homeless,  and  knew  no  more  where  to  lay 
her  head  that  night  than  any  sick  hart  driven  from  its 
kind. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  40T 

She  met  many  in  the  soft  gray  and  golden  evening,  in 
the  fruit-hung  ways,  along  the  edge  of  the  meadows  : 
fathers  with  their  little  children  running  by  them,  laden 
with  plumes  of  meadow-sweet;  mothers  bearing  their 
youngest  born  before  them  on  the  high  sheepskin  saddle ; 
young  lovers  talking  together  as  they  drove  the  old  cow 
to  her  byre;  old  people  counting  their  market  gains 
cheerily;  children  paddling  knee-deep  in  the  brooks  for 
cresses.  None  of  them  had  a  kindly  glance  for  her  ; — all 
had  a  flouting  word.  There  was  not  one  who  offered  her 
so  much  as  a  draught  of  milk;  not  one  who  wished  her 
so  much  as  a  brief  good-night. 

u  She  will  quit  the  country  now ;  that  is  one  good 
thing,"  she  heard  many  of  them  say  of  her.  And  they 
spoke  of  Flamma,  and  praised  him  ;  saying,  how  pure  as 
mvrrh  in  the  nostrils  was  the  death  of  oue  who  feared 
God! 

The  night  came  on  nearer  ;  the  ways  grew  more  lonely; 
the  calf  bleating  sought  its  dam,  the  sheep  folded  down 
close  together,  the  lights  came  out  under  the  lowly  roofs  ; 
now  and  then  from  some  open  window  in  the  distance 
there  came  the  sound  of  voices  singing  together ;  now 
and  then  there  fell  across  her  path  two  shadows  turning 
one  to  the  other. 

She  only  was  alone. 

What  did  she  seek  to  do  ? 

She  paused  on  a  little  slip  of  moss-green  timber  that 
crossed  the  water  in  the  opeu  plain,  and  looked  down  at 
herself  in  the  shining  stream.  None  desired  her — none 
remembered  her ;  none  said  to  her,  "  Stay  with  us  a  little, 
for  love's  sake." 

'*  Surely  I  must  be  vile  as  they  say,  that  all  are  against 
me!"  she  thought;  and  she  pondered  wearily  in  her 
heart  where  her  sin  against  them  could  lie.  That  brief 
delirious  trance  of  joy  that  had  come  to  her  with  the 
setting  of  the  last  day's  sun,  had  with  the  sun  sunk  away. 
The  visions  which  had  haunted  her  sleep  under  the  thorn- 
tree  whilst  the  thrush  sang,  had  been  killed  under  the 
cold  and  bitterness  of  the  waking  world.  She  wondered, 
while  her  face  burned  red  with  shame,  what  she  had  been 
mad  enough   to   dream  of  in  that  sweet  cruel  slumber. 


408  FOLLE-FARINE. 

For  him — she  felt  that  sooner  than  again  look  upward  to 
his  eyes  she  would  die  by  a  thousand  deaths. 

What  was  she  to  him  ? — a  barbarous,  worthless,  and 
unlovely  thing,  whose  very  service  was  despised,  whose 
very  sacrifice  was  condemned. 

"  I  would  live  as  a  leper  all  the  days  of  my  life,  if,  first, 
I  might  be  fair  in  his  sight  one  hour  1"  she  thought ;  and 
she  was  conscious  of  horror  or  of  impiety  in  the  ghastly 
desire,  because  she  had  but  one  religion,  this — her  love. 

She  crossed  the  little  bridge,  and  sat  down  to  rest  on 
the  root  of  an  old  oak  on  the  edge  of  the  fields  of 
poppies. 

The  evening  had  fallen  quite.  There  was  a  bright 
moon  on  the  edge  of  the  plain.  The  cresset-lights  of  the 
cathedral  glowed  through  the  dusk.  All  was  purple  and 
gray  and  still.  There  were  the  scents  of  heavy  earths 
and  of  wild  thymes,  and  the  breath  of  grazing  herds. 
The  little  hamlets  were  but  patches  of  darker  shade  on 
the  soft  brown  shadows  of  the  night.  White  sea-mists, 
curling  and  rising,  chased  each  other  over  the  dim  world. 

She  sat  motionless,  leaning  her  head  upon  her  hand. 

She  could  not  weep,  as  other  creatures  could.  The 
hours  drew  on.  She  had  no  home  to  go  to ;  but  it  was 
not  for  this  that  she  sorrowed. 

Afar  olf,  a  step  trod  down  the  grasses.  A  hawk  rustled 
through  the  gloom.  A  rabbit  fled  across  the  path.  The 
boughs  were  put  aside  by  a  human  hand;  Arslan  came 
out  from  the  darkness  of  the  woods  before  her. 

With  a  sharp  cry  she  sprang  to  her  feet  smd  fled,  im- 
pelled by  passionate,  reasonless  instinct  to  hide  herself 
forever  and  forever  from  the  only  eyes  she  loved. 

Before  her  were  the  maze  of  the  poppy-fields.  In  the 
moonlight  their  blossoms,  so  gorgeous  at  sunset  or  at 
noon,  lost,  all  their  scarlet  gaud  and  purple  pomp,  and 
drooped  like  discrowned  kings  stripped  bare  in  the  mid- 
night of  calamity. 

Their  colorless  flowers  writhed  and  twined  about  her 
ankles.  Her  brown  limbs  glistened  in  the  gleam  from 
the  skies.  She  tightened  her  red  girdle  round  her  loins 
and  ran,  as  a  doe  runs  to  reach  the  sanctuary. 

Long   withes  of   trailing   grasses,    weeds   that  grew 


FOLLE-FARINE.  409 

among  the  grasses,  caught  her  fleet  feet  and  stopped  her. 
The  earth  was  wet  with  dew.  A  tangle  of  boughs  and 
brambles  filled  the  path.  For  once,  her  sure  steps  failed 
her.     She  faltered  and  fell. 

Ere  he  could  touch  her,  she  rose  again.  The  scent  of 
the  wet  leaves  was  in  her  hair.  The  rain-drops  glistened 
on  her  feet.  The  light  of  the  stars  seemed  in  her  burn- 
ing eyes.  Around  her  were  the  gleam  of  the  night,  the 
scent  of  the  flowers,  the  smell  of  woods.  On  her  face 
the  moon  shone. 

She  was  like  a  creature  born  from  the  freshness  of 
dews,  from  the  odor  of  foliage,  from  the  hues  of  the  clouds, 
from  the  foam  of  the  brooks,  from  all  things  of  the  woods 
and  the  witter.  In  that  moment  she  was  beautiful  with 
the  beauty  of  women. 

"  If  only  she  could  content  me  !"  he  thought.  If  only 
he  had  cared  for  the  song  of  the  reed  by  the  river ! 

But  he  cared  nothing  at  all  for  anything  that  lived  ; 
and  a  pursuit  that  was  passionless  had  always  seemed  to 
him  base ;  and  his  feet  were  set  on  a  stony  and  narrow 
road  where  he  would  not  incumber  his  strength  with  a 
thing  of  her  sex,  lest  the  burden  should  draw  him  back- 
ward one  rood  on  his  way. 

He  had  never  loved  her;  he  never  would  love  her;  his 
senses  were  awake  to  her  beauty,  indeed,  and  his  reason 
awed  it  beyond  all  usual  gifts  of  her  sex.  But  he  had 
used  it  in  the  service  of  his  art,  and  therein  had  scruti- 
nized, and  portrayed,  and  debased  until  it  had  lost  to  him 
all  that  fanciful  sanctity,  all  that  half-mysterious  charm, 
which  arouse  the  passion  of  love  in  a  man  to  a  woman. 

So  he  let  her  be,  and  stood  by  her  in  the  dusk  of  the 
night  with  no  light  in  his  own  eyes. 

11  Do  not  fly  from  me,"  he  said  to  her.  "  I  have  sought 
you,  to  ask  your  forgiveness,  and " 

She  stood  silent,  her  head  bent ;  her  hands  were  crossed 
upon  her  chest  in  the  posture  habitual  to  her  under  any 
pain ;  her  face  was  hidden  in  the  shadow;  her  little  bun- 
dle of  clothes  had  dropped  on  the  grasses,  and  was  hidden 
by  them.  Of  Flamma's  death  and  of  her  homelessness 
he  had  heard  nothing. 

"  I  was  harsh  to  you,"  he  said,  gently.     "  I  spoke,  in 
35 


410  FOLLE-FARINE. 

the  bitterness  of  my  heart,  unworthily.  I  was  stung 
with  a  great  shame ; — I  forgot  that  you  could  not  know. 
Can  you  forgive  ?" 

11  The  madness  was  mine,"  she  muttered.  "  It  was  I, 
who  forgot " 

Her  voice  was  very  faint,  and  left  her  lips  with  effort ; 
she  did  not  look  up;  she  stood  bloodless,  breathless, 
swaying  to  and  fro,  as  a  young  tree  which  has  been  cut 
through  near  the  root  sways  ere  it  falls.  She  knew  well 
what  his  words  would  say. 

"You  are  generous,  and  you  shame  me — indeed — 
thus,"  he  said  with  a  certain  softness  as  of  unwilling 
pain  in  his  voice  which  shook  its  coldness  and  serenity. 

This  greatness  in  her,  this  wondrous  faithfulness  to 
himself,  this  silence,  which  bore  all  wounds  from  his  hand, 
and  was  never  broken  to  utter  one  reproach  against  him, 
these  moved  him.  He  could  not  choose  but  see  that  this 
nature,  which  he  bruised  and  forsook,  was  noble  beyond 
any  common  nobility  of  any  human  thing. 

"I  have  deserved  little  at  your  tiands,  and  you  have 
given  me  much,"  he  said  slowly.  "  I  feel  base  and  un- 
worthy ;  for — I  have  sought  you  to  bid  you  farewell." 

She  had  awaited  her  death-blow ;  she  received  its  stroke 
without  a  sound. 

She  dtd  not  move,  nor  cry  out,  nor  make  any  sign  of 
pain,  but  standing  there  her  form  curled  within  itself, 
as  a  withered  fern  curls,  and  all  her  beauty  changed 
like  a  fresh  flower  that  is  held  in  a  flame. 

She  did  not  look  at  him ;  but  waited,  with  her  head 
bent,  and  her  hands  crossed  on  her  breast  as  a  criminal 
waits  for  his  doom. 

His  nerve  nearly  failed  him ;  his  heart  nearly  yielded. 
He  had  no  love  for  her ;  she  was  nothing  to  him.  No 
more  than  any  one  of  the  dark,  nude  savage  women  who 
had  sat  to  his  art  on  the  broken  steps  of  ruined  Temples 
of  the  Sun ;  or  the  antelope-eyed  creatures  of  desert  and 
plain,  who  had  come  on  here  before  him  in  the  light  of  the 
East,  and  had  passed  as  the  shadows  passed,  and,  like 
them,  were  forgotten. 

She  was  nothing  to  him.  And  yet  he  could  not  choose 
but  think — all  this  mighty  love,  all  this  majestic  strength, 


FOLLE-FARTNE.  411 

all  this  superb  and  dreamy  loveliness  would  die  out  here, 
as  the  evening  colors  had  died  out  of  the  skies  in  the 
west,  none  pausing  even  to  note  that  they  were  dead. 

He  knew  that  he  had  but  to  say  to  her,  "  Come  1"  and 
she  would  go  beside  him,  whether  to  shame  or  ignominy, 
or  famine  or  death,  triumphant  and  rejoicing  as  the  mar- 
tyrs of  old  went  to  the  flames,  which  were  to  them  the 
gates  of  paradise. 

He  knew  that  there  would  not  be  a  blow  his  hand  could 
deal  which  could  make  her  deem  him  cruel ;  he  knew  that 
there  would  be  no  crime  which  he  could  bid  her  commit 
for  him  which  would  not  seem  to  her  a  virtue ;  he  knew 
that  for  one  hour  of  his  love  she  would  slay  herself  by 
any  death  he  told  her ;  he  knew  that  the  deepest  wretch- 
edness lived  through  by  his  side  would  be  sweeter  and 
more  glorious  than  any  kingdom  of  the  world  or  heaven. 
And  he  knew  well  that  to  no  man  is  it  given  to  be  loved 
twice  with  such  love  as  this. 

Yet, — he  loved  not  her  ;  and  he  was,  therefore,  strong, 
and  he  drove  the  death-stroke  home,  with  pity,  with  com- 
passion, with  gentleness,  yet  surely  home — to  the  heart. 
"  A  stranger  came  to  me  an  hour  or  more  ago,"  he  said 
to  her ;  and  it  seemed  even  to  him  as  though  he  slew  a 
life  godlier  and  purer  and  stronger  than  his  own, — "  an 
old  man,  who  gave  no  name.  I  have  seen  his  face — far 
away,  long  ago — I  am  not  sure.  The  memory  is  too 
vague.  He  seemed  a  man  of  knowledge,  and  a  man  crit- 
ical and  keen.  That  study  of  you — the  one  among  the 
poppies — you  remember — took  his  eyes  and  pleased  him. 
He  bore  it  away  with  him,  and  left  in  its  stead  a  roll  of 
paper  money — money  enough  to  take  me  back  among 
men — to  set  me  free  for  a  little  space.  Oh  child !  you 
have  seen — this  hell  on  earth  kills  me.  It  is  a  death  in 
life.  It  has  made  me  brutal  to  you  sometimes ;  sometimes 
I  must  hurt  something,  or  go  mad." 

She  was  silent ;  her  attitude  had  not  changed,  but  all 
her  loveliness  was  like  one  of  the  poppies  that  his  foot 
had  trodden  on,  discolored,  broken,  ruined.  She  stood  as 
though  changed  to  a  statue  of  bronze. 

He  looked  on  her,  and  knew  that  no  creature  had  ever 
loved  him  as  this  creature  had  loved.     But  of  love  he 


412  FOLLE-FARINE. 

wanted  nothing, — it  was  wearying  to  him  ;  all  he  desired 
was  power  among  men. 

"I  have  been  cruel  to  you,"  he  said,  suddenly.  "I 
have  stung  and  wounded  you  often.  I  have  dealt  with 
your  beauty  as  with  this  flower  under  my  foot.  I  have 
had  no  pity  for  you.     Can  y ou  forgive  me  ere  I  go  ?" 

"  You  have  no  sins  to  me,"  she  made  answer  to  him. 
She  did  not  stir  ;  nor  did  the  deadly  calm  on  her  face 
change ;  but  her  voice  had  a  harsh  metallic  sound,  like 
the  jar  of  a  bell  that  is  broken. 

He  was  silent  also.  The  coldness  and  the  arrogance  of 
his  heart  were  pained  and  humbled  by  her  pardon  of  them. 
He  knew  that  he  had  been  pitiless  to  her — with  a  pitiless- 
ness  less  excusable  than  that  which  is  born  of  the  fierce- 
ness of  passion  and  the  idolatrous  desires  of  the  senses. 
Man  would  have  held  him  blameless  here,  because  he  had 
forborne  to  pluck  for  his  own  delight  this  red  and  gold 
reed  in  the  swamp ;  but  he  himself  knew  well  that,  never- 
theless, he  had  trodden  its  life  out,  and  so  bruised  it,  as  he 
went,  that  never  would  any  wind  of  heaven  breathe  music 
through  its  shattered  grace  again. 

"  When  do  you  go?"  she  asked. 

Her  voice  had  still  the  same  harsh,  broken  sound  in  it. 
She  did  not  lift  the  lids  of  her  eyes;  her  arms  were 
crossed  upon  her  breast ; — all  the  ruins  of  the  trampled 
poppy-blossom  were  about  her,  blood-red  as  a  field  where 
men  have  fought  and  died. 

He  answered  her,  "At  dawn." 

"  And  where  V 

"  To  Paris.     I  will  find  fame — or  a  grave." 

A  long  silence  fell  between  them.  The  church  chimes, 
far  away  in  the  darkness,  tolled  the  ninth  hour.  She 
stood  passive,  colorless  as  the  poppies  were,  bloodless 
from  the  thick,  dull  beating  of  her  heart.  The  purple 
shadow  and  the  white  stars  swam  around  her.  Her  heart 
was  broken  ;  but  she  gave  no  sign.  It  was  her  nature  to 
'suffer  to  the  last  in  silence. 

He  looked  at  her,  and  his  own  heart  softened ;  almost 
he  repented  him. 

He  stretched  his  arms  to  her,  and  drew  her  into  them, 
and  kissed  the  dew-laden  weight  of  her  hair,  and  the 


FOLLE-FARINE.  413 

curling,  meek  form,  while  all  warmth  had  died,  and  the 
passionate  loveliness,  which  was  cast  to  him,  to  be  folded 
in  his  bosom  or  thrust  away  by  his  foot — as  he  chose. 

"Oh,  child,  forgive  me,  and  forget  me,"  he  murmured. 
"  I  have  been  base  to  you, — brutal,  and  bitter,  and  cold 
oftentimes; — yet  I  would  have  loved  you,  if  I  could. 
Love  would  have  been  youth,  folly,  oblivion  ;  all  the  near- 
est likeness  that  men  get  of  happiness  on  earth.  But  love 
is  dead  in  me,  I  think,  otherwise " 

She  burned  like  fire,  and  grew  cold  as  ice  in  his  embrace. 
Her  brain  reeled ;  her  sight  was  blind.  She  trembled  as 
she  had  never  done  under  the  sharpest  throes  of  Flamma's 
scourge.  Suddenly  she  cast  her  arms  about  his  throat 
and  clung  to  him,  and  kissed  him  in  answer  with  that 
strange,  mute,  terrible  passion  with  which  the  lips  of  the 
dying  kiss  the  warm  and  living  face  that  bends  above 
them,  on  which  they  know  they  never  again  will  rest. 

Then  she  broke  from  him,  and  sprang  into  the  maze  of 
the  moonlit  fields,  and  fled  from  him  like  a  stag  that  bears 
its  death-shot  in  it,  and  knows  it,  and  seeks  to  hide  itself 
and  die  unseen. 

He  pursued  her,  urged  by  a  desire  that  was  cruel,  and 
a  sorrow  that  was  tender.  He  had  no  love  for  her ;  and 
yet — now  that  he  had  thrown  her  from  him  forever — he 
would  fain  have  felt  those  hot  mute  lips  tremble  again  in 
their  terrible  eloquence  upon  his  own. 

But  he  sought  her  in  vain.  The  shadows  of  the  night 
hid  her  from  him. 

He  went  back  to  his  home  alone. 

"  It  is  best  so,"  he  said  to  himself. 

For  the  life  that  lay  before  him  he  needed  all  his 
strength,  all  his  coldness,  all  his  cruelty.  And  she  was 
only  a  female  thing — a  reed  of  the  river,  songless,  and 
blown  by  the  wind  as  the  rest  were. 

He  returned  to  his  solitude,  and  lit  his  lamp,  and  looked 
on  the  creations  that  alone  he  loved. 

"  They  shall  live — or  I  will  die,"  he  said  to  hi«-  own 
heart.  With  the  war  to  which  he  went  what  had  any 
amorous  toy  to  do  ? 

That  night  Hermes  had  no  voice  for  him. 

Else  might  the  wise  god  have  said, "  Many  reeds  grow  to- 
35* 


4 1 4  FOLLE-FARINE. 

gether  by  the  river,  and  men  tread  them  at  will,  and  none 
are  the  worse.  Bat  in  one  reed  of  a  million  song  is  hidden  ; 
and  when  a  man  carelessly  breaks  that  reed  ia  twain,  he 
may  miss  its  music  often  and  long, — yea,  all  the  years  of 
his  life." 

But  Hermes  that  night  spake  not. 

And  he  brake  his  reed,  and  cast  it  behind  him. 


CHAPTER  V. 


When  the  dawn  came,  it  found  her  lying  face  down- 
ward among  the  rushes  by  the  river.  She  had  run  on, 
and  on,  and  on  blindly,  not  knowing  whither  she  fled, 
with  the  strange  force  that  despair  lends;  then  suddenly 
had  dropped,  as  a  young  bull  drops  in  the  circus  with  the 
steel  sheathed  in  its  brain.  There  she  had  remained  in- 
sensible, the  blood  flowing  a  little  from  her  mouth. 

It  was  quite  lonely  by  the  waterside.  A  crane  among 
the  sedges,  an  owl  on  the  wind,  a  water-lizard  under  the 
stones,  such  were  the  only  moving  things.  It  was  in  a 
solitary  bend  of  the  stream;  its  banks  were  green  and 
quiet ;  there  were  no  dwellings  near ;  and  there  was  no 
light  anywhere,  except  the  dull  glow  of  the  lamp  above 
the  Calvary. 

No  one  found  her.  A  young  fox  came  and  smelt  at 
her,  and  stole  frightened  away.  That  was  all.  A  sharp 
wind  rising  with  the  reddening  of  the  east  blew  on  her, 
and  recalled  her  to  consciousness  after  many  hours. 
When  her  eyes  at  length  opened,  with  a  blank  stare  upon 
the  grayness  of  the  shadows,  she  lifted  herself  a  little  and 
sat  still,  and  wondered  what  had  chanced  to  her. 

The  first  rays  of  the  sun  rose  over  the  dim  blue  haze 
of  the^horjzon.  She  looked  at  it  and  tried  to  remember, 
but  failed.     Her  brain  was  sick  and  dull. 

A  little  beetle,  green  and  bronze,  climbed  in  and  out 
among  the  sand  of  the  river-shore  ;  her  eyes  vacantly  fol- 
lowed the  insect's  aimless  circles.     She  tried  to  think, 


FOLLE-FARINE.  415 

and  could  not;  her  thoughts  went  feebly  and  madly 
round  and  round,  round  and  round,  as  the  beetle  went  in 
his  maze  of  sand.  It  was  all  so  gray,  so  still,  so  chill, 
she  was  afraid  of  it.  Her  limbs  were  stiffened  by  the 
exposure  and  dews  of  the  night.  She  shivered  and  was 
cold. 

The  sun  rose — a  globe  of  flame  above  the  edge  of  the 
world. 

Memory  flashed  on  her  with  its  light. 

She  rose  a  little,  staggering  and  blind,  and  weak- 
ened by  the  loss  of  blood ;  she  crept  feebly  to  the  edge 
of  the  stream,  and  washed  the  stains  from  her  lips,  and 
let  her  face  rest  a  little  in  the  sweet,  silent,  flowing 
water. 

Then  she  sat  still  amidst  the  long  rushlike  grass,  and 
thought,  and  thought,  and  wondered  why  life  was  so 
tough  and  merciless  a  thing,  that  it  would  ache  on,  and 
burn  on,  and  keep  misery  awake  to  know  itself  even  when 
its  death-blow  had  been  dealt,  and  the  steel  was  in  its 
side. 

She  was  still  only  half  sensible  of  her  wretchedness. 
She  was  numbed  by  weakness,  and  her  brain  seemed 
deadened  by  a  hot  pain,  that  shot  through  it  as  with 
tongues  of  flame. 

The  little  beetle  at  her  feet  was  busied  in  a  yellower 
soil  than  sand.  He  moved  round  and  round  in  a  little 
dazzling  heap  of  coins  and  trembling  paper  thin  as  gauze. 
She  saw  it  without  seeing  for  awhiie  ;  then,  all  at  once, 
a  horror  flashed  on  her.  She  saw  that  the  money  had 
fallen  from  her  tunic.  She  guessed  the  truth — that  in  his 
last  embrace  he  had  slid  into  her  bosom,  in  notes  and  in 
coin,  half  that  sum  whereof  he  had  spoken  as  the  ransom 
which  had  set  him  free. 

Her  bloodless  face  grew  scarlet  with  an  immeasurable 
shame.  She  would  have  suffered  far  less  if  he  had  killed 
her. 

He  who  denied  her  love  to  give  her  gold !  Better 
that,  when  he  had  kissed  her,  he  had  covered  her  eyes 
softly  with  one  hand,  and  with  the  other  driven  his  knife 
straight  through  the  white  warmth  of  her  breast. 

The  sight  of  the  gold  stung  her  like  a  snake. 


416  FOLLE-FARINE. 

Gold ! — such  wage  as  men  flung  to  the  painted  harlots 
gibing  at  the  corners  of  the  streets ! 

The  horror  of  the  humiliation  filled  her  with  loathing 
of  herself.  Unless  she  had  become  shameful  in  his 
sight,  she  thought,  he  could  not  have  cast  this  shame 
upon  her. 

She  gathered  herself  slowly  up,  and  stood  and  looked 
with  blind,  aching  eyes  at  the  splendor  of  the  sunrise. 

Her  heart  was  breaking. 

Her  one  brief  dream  of  gladness  was  severed  sharply, 
as  with  a  sword,  and  killed  forever. 

She  did  not  reason — all  thought  was  stunned  in  her ; 
but  as  a  woman,  who  loves  looking  on  the  face  she  loves, 
will  see  sure  death  written  there  long  ere  any  other  can 
detect  it,  so  she  knew,  by  the  fatal  and  unerring  instinct 
of  passion,  that  he  was  gone  from  her  as  utterly  and  as 
eternally  as  though  his  grave  had  closed  on  him. 

She  did  not  even  in  her  own  heart  reproach  him.  Her 
love  for  him  was  too  perfect  to  make  rebuke  against  him 
possible  to  her.  Had  he  not  a  right  to  go  as  he  would, 
to  do  as  he  chose,  to  take  her  or  leave  her,  as  best  might 
seem  to  him  ?  Only  he  had  no  right  to  shame  her  with 
what  he  had  deemed  shame  to  himself;  no  right  to  insult 
what  he  had  slain. 

She  gathered  herself  slowly  up,  and  took  his  money  in 
her  hand,  and  went  along  the  river-bank.  Whither  ? 
She  had  no  knowledge  at  first ;  but,  as  she  moved  against 
the  white  light  and  the  cool  currents  of  the  morning  air, 
her  brain  cleared  a  little.  The  purpose  that  had  risen  in 
her  slowly  matured  and  strengthened  ;  without  its  suste- 
nance she  would  have  sunk  down  and  perished,  like  a 
flower  cut  at  the  root. 

Of  all  the  world  that  lay  beyond  the  pale  of  those 
golden  and  russet  orchards  and  scarlet  lakes  of  blowing 
poppies  she  had  no  more  knowledge  than  the  lizard  at 
her  feet. 

Cities,  he  had  often  said,  were  as  fiery  furnaces  that 
consumed  all  youth  and  innocence  which  touched  them : 
for  such  as  she  to  go  to  them  was,  he  had  often  said,  to 
cast  a  luscious  and  golden  peach  of  the  summer  into  the 
core  of  a  wasps'-nest.     Nevertheless,  her  mind  was  reso- 


FOLLE-FARINE.  41  f 

lute  to  follow  him, — to  follow  him  unknown  by  him  ;  so 
that,  if  his. footsteps  turned  to  brighter  paths,  her  shadow 
might  never  fall  across  his  ways;  but  so  that,  if  need 
were,  if  failure  still  pursued  him,  and  by  failure  came 
misery  and  death,  she  would  be  there  beside  him,  to  share 
those  fatal  gifts  which  none  would  dispute  with  her  or 
grudge  her. 

To  follow  him  was  to  her  an  instinct  as  natural  and  as 
irresistible  as  it  is  to  the  dog  to  track  his  master's  wan- 
derings. 

She  would  have  starved  ere  ever  she  would  have  told 
him  that  she  hungered.  She  would  have  perished  by  the 
roadside  ere  ever  she  would  have  cried  to  him  that  she 
was  homeless.  She  would  have  been  torn  asunder  for  a 
meal  by  wolves  ere  she  would  have  bought  safety  or  suc- 
cor by  one  coin  of  that  gold  he  had  slid  into  her  bosom, 
like  the  wages  of  a  thing  that  was  vile. 

But  to  follow  him  she  never  hesitated :  unless  this  had 
been  possible  to  her,  she  would  have  refused  to  live  an- 
other hour.  The  love  in  her,  at  once  savage  and  sublime, 
at  once  strong  as  the  lion's  rage  and  humble  as  the  camel's 
endurance,  made  her  take  patiently  all  wrongs  at  his 
hands,  but  made  her  powerless  to  imagine  a  life  in  which 
he  was  not. 

She  went  slowly  now  through  the  country,  in  the  hush 
of  the  waking  day. 

He  had  said  that  he  would  leave  at  dawn. 

In  her  uuconscious  agony  of  the  night  gone  by,  she 
had  run  far  and  fast  ere  she  had  fallen ;  and  now,  upon 
her  waking,  she  had  found  herself  some  league  from  the 
old  mill-woods,  and  farther  yet  from  the  tower  on  the 
river  where  he  dwelt. 

She  was  weak,  and  the  way  seemed  very  long  to  her ; 
ever  and  again,  too,  she  started  aside  and  hid  herself, 
thinking  each  step  were  his.  She  wanted  to  give  him 
back  his  gold,  yet  she  felt  as  though  one  look  of  his  eyes 
would  kill  her. 

It  was  long,  and  the  sun  was  high,  ere  she  had  dragged 
her  stiff  and  feeble  limbs  through  the  long  grasses  of  the 
shore  and  reached  the  ruined  granary.  Crouching  down, 
and  gazing  through  the  spaces  in  the  stones  from  which 


418  FOLLEFARINE. 

so  often  she  had  watched  him,  she  saw  at  once  that  the 
place  was  desolate. 

The  great  Barabbas,  and  the  painted  panels  and  can- 
vases, and  all  the  pigments  and  tools  and  articles  of  an 
artist's  store,  were  gone;  but  the  figures  on  the  walls 
were  perforce  left  there  to  perish.  The  early  light  fell 
full  upon  them,  sad  and  calm  and  pale,  living  their  life 
upon  the  stone. 

She  entered  and  looked  at  them. 

She  loved  them  greatly ;  it  pierced  her  heart  to  leave 
them  there — alone. 

The  bound  Helios  working  at  the  mill,  with  white 
Hermes  watching,  mute  and  content ; — and  Persephone 
crouching  in  the  awful  shadow  of  the  dread  winged  King, 
— the  Greek  youths,  with  doves  in  their  breasts  and 
golden  apples  in  their  hands, — the  women  dancing  upon 
Cithaeron  in  the  moonlight, — the  young  gladiator  wrest- 
ling with  the  Libyan  lion, — all  the  familiar  shapes  and 
stories  that  made  the  gray  walls  teem  with  the  old  sweet 
life  of  the  heroic  times,  were  there — left  to  the  rat  and 
the  spider,  the  dust  and  the  damp,  the  slow,  sad  death 
of  a  decay  which  no  heart  would  sorrow  for,  nor  any 
hand  arrest. 

The  days  would  come  and  go,  the  suns  would  rise  and 
set,  the  nights  would  fall,  and  the  waters  flow,  and  the 
great  stars  throb  above  in  the  skies,  and  they  would  be 
there — alone. 

To  her  they  were  living  things,  beautiful  and  divine ; 
they  were  bound  up  with  all  the  hours  of  her  love  ;  and 
at  their  feet  she  had  known  the  one  brief  dream  of  ec- 
stasy that  had  sprung  up  for  her,  great  and  golden  as  the 
prophet's  gourd,  and  as  the  gourd  in  a  night  had  withered. 

She  held  them  in  a  passionate  tenderness — these,  the 
first  creatures  who  had  spoken  to  her  with  a  smile,  and 
had  brought  light  into  the  darkness  of  her  life. 

She  flung  herself  on  the  ground  and  kissed  its  dust, 
and  prayed  for  them  in  an  agony  of  prayer — prayed  for 
them  that  the  hour  might  come,  and  come  quickly,  when 
men  would  see  the  greatness  of  their  maker,  and  would 
remember  them,  and  seek  them,  and  bear  them  forth  in 
honor  and  in  worship  to  the  nations.     She  prayed  in  an 


FOLLE-FARINE.  419 

agony ;  prayed  blindly,  and  to  whom  she  knew  not ; 
prayed,  in  the  sightless  instinct  of  the  human  heart,  to- 
wards some  greater  strength  which  could  bestow  at  once 
retribution  and  consolation. 

Nor  was  it  so  much  for  him  as  for  them  that  she  thus 
prayed :  in  loving  them  she  had  reached  the  pure  and 
impersonal  passion  of  the  artist.  To  have  them  live, 
she  would  have  given  her  own  life. 

Then  the  bonds  of  her  agony  seemed  to  be  severed  ; 
and,  for  the  first  time,  she  fell  into  a  passion  of  tears,  and, 
stretched  there  on  the  floor  of  the  forsaken  chamber,  wept 
as  women  weep  upon  a  grave. 

When  she  arose,  at  length,  she  met  the  eyes  of  Hypnos 
and  Oneiros  and  Thanatos — the  gentle  gods  who  give 
forgetfulness  to  men. 

They  were  her  dear  gods,  her  best  beloved  and  most 
compassionate ;  yet  their  look  struck  coldly  to  her  heart. 

Sleep,  Dreams,  and  Death, — were  these  the  only  gifts 
with  which  the  gods,  being  merciful,  could  answer  prayer  ? 


CHAPTER    VI. 


At  the  little  quay  in  the  town  many  boats  were  lading 
and  unlading,  and  many  setting  their  Nsails  to  go  south- 
ward with  their  loads  of  eggs,  or  of  birds,  of  flowers,  of 
fruit,  or  of  herbage  ;  all  smelling  of  summer  rain,  and  the 
odors  of  freshly  plowed  earths  turned  up  with  the  nest 
of  the  lark  and  the  root  of  the  cowslip  laid  bare  in  them. 

Folle-Farine  lost  herself  in  its  little  busy  crowd,  and 
learned  what  she  needed  without  any  asking,  in  turn, 
question  of  her. 

Arslan  had  sailed  at  sunrise. 

There  was  a  little  boat,  with  an  old  man  in  it,  loaded 
with  Russian  violets  from  a  flower-farm.  The  old  man 
was  angered  and  in  trouble  :  the  lad  who  steered  for  him 
had  failed  him,  and  the  young  men  and  boys  on  the 
canals  were  all  too  busied  to  be  willing  to  go  the  voyage 


420  FOLLE-FARINE. 

for  the  wretched  pittance  he  offered.  She  heard,  and 
leaned  towards  him. 

"  Do  you  go  the  way  to  Paris  ?" 

The  old  man  nodded. 

"  I  will  steer  for  you,  then,"  she  said  to  him ;  and 
leaped  down  among  his  fragrant  freight.  He  was  a 
stranger  to  her,  and  let  her  be.  She  did  for  him  as  well 
as  another,  since  she  said  that  she  knew  those  waters  well. 

He  was  in  haste,  and,  without  more  words,  he  loosened 
his  sail,  and  cut  his  moor-rope,  and  set  his  little  vessel 
adrift  down  the  water-ways  of  the  town,  the  violets  filling 
the  air  with  their  odors  and  blue  as  the  eyes  of  a  child 
that  wakes  smiling. 

All  the  old  familiar  streets,  all  the  dusky  gateways  and 
dim  passages,  all  the  ropes  on  which  the  lanterns  and  the 
linen  hung,  all  the  wide  carved  stairways  water-washed, 
all  the  dim  windows  that  the  women  filled  with  pots  of 
ivy  and  the  song  of  birds, — she  was  drifting  from  them 
with  every  pulse  of  the  tide,  never  again  to  return  ;  but 
she  looked  at  them  without  seeing  them,  indifferent,  and 
having  no  memory  of  them  ;  her  brain,  and  her  heart,  and 
her  soul  were  with  the  boat  that  she  followed. 

It  was  the  day  of  the  weekly  market.  The  broad  flat- 
bottomed  boats  were  coming  in  at  sunrise,  in  each  some 
cargo  of  green  food  or  of  farm  produce  ;  a  strong  girl 
rowing  with  bare  arms,  and  the  sun  catching  the  white 
glint  of  her  head-gear.  Boys  with  coils  of  spotted  birds' 
eggs,  children  with  lapfuls  of  wood-gathered  primroses, 
old  women  nursing  a  wicker  cage  of  cackling  hens  or  hiss- 
ing geese,  mules  and  asses,  shaking  their  bells  and  worsted 
tassels,  bearing  their  riders  high  on  sheepskin  saddles, — 
these  all  went  by  her  on  the  river,  or  on  the  towing  path, 
or  on  the  broad  highroad  that  ran  for  a  space  by  the 
water's  edge. 

All  of  these  knew  her  well ;  all  of  these  some  time  or 
another  had  jeered  her,  jostled  her,  flouted  her,  or  fled 
from  her.  But  no  one  stopped  her.  No  one  cared  enough 
for  her  to  care  even  to  wonder  whither  she  went. 

She  glided  out  of  the  town,  past  the  banks  she  knew 
so  well,  along  the  line  of  the  wood  and  the  orchards  of 
Ypres.     But  what  at  another  time  would  have  had  pain 


FOLLE-FARINE.  421 

for  her,  and  held  her  with  the  bonds  of  a  sad  familiarity, 
now  scarcely  moved  her.  One  great  grief  and  one  great 
passion  had  drowned  all  lesser  woes,  and  scorched  all 
slighter  memories. 

All  day  long  they  sailed. 

At  noon  the  old  man  gave  her  a  little  fruit  and  a  crust 
as  part  of  her  wage  ;  she  tried  to  eat  them,  knowing  she 
would  want  all  her  strength. 

They  left  the  course  of  the  stream  that  she  knew,  and 
sailed  farther  than  she  had  ever  sailed  ;  passed  towns 
whose  bells  were  ringing,  and  noble  bridges  gleaming  in 
the  sun,  and  water-mills  black  and  gruesome,  and  bright 
orchards  and  vineyards  heavy  with  the  promise  of  fruit. 
She  knew  none  of  them.  There  were  only  the  water  flow- 
\tg  under  the  keel,  and  the  blue  sky  above,  with  the  rooks 
circling  in  it,  which  had  the  look  of  friends  to  her. 

The  twilight  fell ;  still  the  wind  served,  and  still  they 
held  on;  the  mists  came,  white  and  thick,  and  stars  rose, 
and  the  voices  from  the  shores  sounded  strangely,  with 
here  and  there  a  note  of  music  or  the  deep  roll  of  a  drum. 

So  she  drifted  out  of  the  old  life  into  an  unknown  world. 
But  she  never  once  looked  back.  Why  should  she  ? — He 
had  gone  before. 

When  it  was  quite  night,  they  drew  near  to  a  busy 
town,  whose  lights  glittered  by  hundreds  and  thousands 
on  the  bank.  There  were  many  barges  and  small  boats 
at  anchor  in  its  wharves,  hanging  out  lanterns  at  their 
mast-heads.  The  old  man  bade  her  steer  his  boat  among 
them,  and  with  a  cord  he  made  it  fast. 

"  This  is  Paris  ?"  she  asked  breathlessly 

The  old  man  laughed  : 

"  Paris  is  days'  sail  away." 

"  I  asked  you  if  you  went  to  Paris  ?" 

The  old  man  laughed  again : 

"  I  said  I  came  the  Paris  way.  So  I  have  done. 
Land." 

Her  face  set  with  an  anger  that  made  him  wince,  dull 
though  his  conscience  was. 

"  You  cheated  me,"  she  said,  briefly;  and  she  climbed 
the  boat's  side,  and,  shaking  the  violets  off  her,  set  her 
foot  upon  the  pier,  not  stopping  to  waste  more  words. 

36 


422  FOLLE-FARINE. 

But  a  great  terror  fell  on  her. 

She  had  thought  that  the  boat  would  bring  her  straight 
to  Paris  ;  and,  once  in  Paris,  she  had  thought  that  it  would 
be  as  easy  to  trace  his  steps  there  as  it  had  been  in  the 
little  town  that  she  had  left.  She  had  had  no  sense  of 
distance — no  knowledge  of  the  size  of  cities;  the  width, 
and  noise,  and  hurry,  and  confusion  of  this  one  waterside 
town  made  her  helpless  and  stupid. 

She  stood  like  a  young  lost  dog  upon  the  flags  of  the 
landing-place,  not  knowing  whither  to  go,  nor  what  to  do. 

The  old  man,  busied  in  unlading  his  violets  into  the 
wicker  creels  of  the  women  waiting  for  them,  took  no 
notice  of  her ;  why  should  he  ?  He  had  used  her  so  long 
as  he  had  wanted  her. 

There  were  incessant  turmoil,  outcry,  and  uproar  round 
the  landing-stairs,  where  large  cargoes  of  beetroot,  cab- 
bages, and  fish  were*being  put  on  shore.  The  buyers 
and  the  sellers  screamed  and  swore ;  the  tawny  light  of 
oil-lamps  flickered  over  their  furious  faces ;  the  people 
jostled  her,  pushed  her,  cursed  her,  for  being  in  the  way. 
She  shrank  back  in  bewilderment  and  disgust,  and  walked 
feebly  away  from  the  edge  of  the  river,  trying  to  think, 
trying  to  get  back  her  old  health  and  her  old  force. 

The  people  of  the  streets  were  too  occupied  to  take  any 
heed  of  her.  Only  one  little  ragged  boy  danced  before 
her  a  moment,  shrieking,  "  The  gypsy !  the  gypsy  1  Good 
little  fathers,  look  to  your  pockets  I" 

But  she  was  too  used  to  the  language  of  abuse  to  be 
moved  by  it.  She  went  on,  as  though  she  were  deaf, 
through  the  yelling  of  the  children  and  the  chattering  and 
chaffering  of  the  trading  multitude. 

There  was  a  little  street  leading  off  the  quay,  pic- 
turesque and  ancient,  with  parquetted  houses  and  quaint 
painted  signs ;  at  the  corner  of  it  sat  an  old  woman  on  a 
wooden  stool,  with  a  huge  fan  of  linen  on  her  head  like 
a  mushroom.  She  was  selling  roasted  chestnuts  by  the 
glare  of  a  little  horn  lantern. 

By  this  woman  she  paused,  and  asked  the  way  to  Paris. 

"  Paris  1     This  is  a  long  way  from  Paris." 

"How  far— to  walk?" 

"  That  depends.     My  boy  went  up  there  on  foot  last 


FOLLE-FARINE.  423 

summer;  he. is  a  young  fool,  blotting  and  messing  with 
ink  and  paper,  while  he  talks  of  being  a  great  man,  and 
sups  with  the  rats  in  the  sewers !  He,  I  think,  was  a 
week  walking  it.  It  is  pleasant  enough  in  fair  weather. 
But  you — you  are  a  gypsy.    Where  are  your  people  ?" 

"I  have  no  people." 

She  did  not  know  even  what  this  epithet  of  gypsy, 
which  they  so  often  cast  at  her,  really  meant.  She  re- 
membered the  old  life  of  the  Liebana,  but  she  did  not 
know  what  manner  of  life  it  had  been  ;  and  since  Phra- 
tos  had  left  her  there,  no  one  of  his  tribe  or  of  his 
kind  had  been  seen  in  the  little  Norman  town  among  the 
orchards. 

The  old  woman  grinned,  trimming  her  lantern. 

11  If  you  are  too  bad  for  them,  you  must  be  bad  indeed  I 
You  will  do  very  well  for  Paris,  no  doubt." 

And  she  began  to  count  her  chestnuts,  lest  this  stranger 
should  steal  any  of  them. 

Eolle-Farine  took  no  notice  of  the  words. 

u  Will  you  show  me  which  is  the  road  to  take  ?"  she 
asked.  Meanwhile  the  street-boy  had  brought  three  or 
four  of  his  comrades  to  stare  at  her ;  and  they  were  dan- 
cing round  her  with  grotesque  grimace,  and  singing, 
u  Houpe  la,  Houpe  la !     Burn  her  for  a  witch  I" 

The  woman  directed  her  which  road  to  go  as  well  as 
she  could  for  the  falling  darkness,  and  she  thanked  the 
woman  and  went.  The  street-children  ran  at  her  heels 
like  little  curs,  yelling  and  hissing  foul  language ;  but 
she  ran  too,  and  was  swifter  than  they,  and  outstripped 
them,  the  hardy  training  of  her  limbs  standing  her  in 
good  service. 

How  far  she  ran,  or  what  streets  she  traversed,  she 
could  not  tell  ;  the  chestnut-seller  had  said  "Leave  the 
pole-star  behind  you,"  and  the  star  was  shining  behind 
her  always,  and  she  ran  south  steadily. 

Great  buildings,  lighted  casements,  high  stone  walls, 
groups  of  people,  troopers  drinking,  girls  laughing,  men 
playing  dominoes  in  the  taverns,  women  chattering  in 
the  coffee-houses,  a  line  of  priests  going  to  a  death-bed 
with  the  bell  ringing  before  the  Host,  a  line  of  soldiers 
filing  through  great  doors  as  the  drums  rolled  the  rentree 


424  FOLLE-FARWE. 

au  caserne, — thousands  of  these  pictures  glowed  in  her 
path  a  moment,  with  the  next  to  fade  and  give  place  to 
others.  But  she  looked  neither  to  the  right  nor  left,  and 
held  on  straightly  for  the  south. 

Once  or  twice  a  man  halloed  after  her,  or  a  soldier 
tried  to  stop  her.  Once,  going  through  the  gateway  in 
the  southern  wall,  a  sentinel  challenged  her,  and  leveled 
his  bayonet  only  a  second  too  late.  But  she  eluded  them 
all  by  the  swiftness  of  her  flight  and  the  suddenness  of 
her  apparition,  and  she  got  out  safe  beyond  the  barriers 
of  the  town,  and  on  to  the  road  that  led  to  the  country, — 
a  road  quiet  and  white  in  the  moonlight,  and  bordered  on 
either  side  with  the  tall  poplars  and  the  dim  bare  reapen 
fields  which  looked  to  her  like  dear  familiar  friends. 

It  was  lonely,  and  she  sat  down  on  a  stone  by  the 
wayside  and  rested.  She  had  no  hesitation  in  what  she 
was  doing.  He  had  gone  south,  and  she  would  go  like- 
wise ;  that  she  might  fail  to  find  him  there,  never  occurred 
to  her.  Of  what  a  city  was  she  had  not  yet  any  concep- 
tion ;  her  sole  measurement  of  one  was  by  the  little  towns 
whither  she  had  driven  the  mules  to  sell  the  fruits  and 
the  fowls. 

To  have  been  cheated  of  Paris,  and  to  find  herself  thus 
far  distant  from  it,  appalled  her,  and  made  her  heart 
sink. 

But  it  had  no  power  to  make  her  hesitate  in  the  course 
she  took.  She  had  no  fear  and  no  doubt:  the  worst 
thing  that  could  have  come  to  her  had  come  already ; 
the  silence  and  the  strength  of  absolute  despair  were  on 
her. 

Besides,  a  certain  thrill  of  liberty  was  on  her.  For  the 
first  time  in  all  her  life  she  was  absolutely  free,  with  the 
freedom  of  the  will  and  of  the  body  both. 

She  was  no  longer  captive  to  one  place,  bond-slave  to 
one  tyranny ;  she  was  no  longer  driven  with  curses  and 
commands,  and  yoked  and  harnessed  every  moment  of 
her  days.  To  her,  with,  the  blood  of  a  tameless  race  in 
her,  there  was  a  certain  force  and  elasticity  in  this  de- 
liverance from  bondage,  that  lifted  some  measure  of  her 
great  woe  off  her.  She  could  not  be  absolutely  wretched 
so  long  as  the  open  sky  was  above  her,  and  the  smell  of 


FOLLE-FARINE.  425 

the  fields  about  her,  and  on  her  face  the  breath  of  the 
blowing  winds. 

She  had  that  love  which  is  as  the  bezoar  stone  of 
fable — an  amulet  that  makes  all  wounds  unfelt,  and  death 
a  thing  to  smile  at  in  derision. 

Without  some  strong  impulsion  from  without,  she 
might  never  have  cut  herself  adrift  from  the  tyranny  that 
had  held  her  down  from  childhood ;  and  even  the  one 
happiness  she  had  known  had  been  but  little  more  than 
the  exchange  of  one  manner  of  slavery  for  another. 

But  now  she  was  free — absolutely  free  ;  and  in  the  calm, 
cool  night — in  the  dusk  and  the  solitude,  with  the  smell 
of  the  fields  around  her,  and  above  her  the  stars,  she  knew 
it  and  was  glad, — glad  even  amidst  the  woe  of  loneliness 
and  the  agony  of  abandonment.  The  daughter  of  Taric 
could  not  be  absolutely  wretched  so  long  as  the  open  air 
was  about  her,  and  the  world  was  before  her  wherein  to 
roam. 

She  sat  awhile  by  the  roadside  and  counted  his  gold 
by  the  gleam  of  the  stars,  and  put  it  away  securely  in 
her  girdle,  and  drank  from  a  brook  beside  her,  and  tried 
to  eat  a  little  of  the  bread  which  the  old  boatman  had 
given  her  as  her  wages,  with  three  pieces  of  copper 
money. 

But  the  crust  choked  her;  she  felt  hot  with  fever,  and 
her  throat  wras  parched  and  full  of  pain. 

The  moon  was  full  upon  her  where  she  sat;  the  red 
and  white  of  her  dress  bore  a  strange  look ;  her  face  was 
colorless,  and  her  eyes  looked  but  the  larger  and  more 
lustrous  for  the  black  shadows  beneath  them,  and  the 
weary  swollen  droop  of  their  lids. 

She  sat  there,  and  pondered  on  the  next  step  she  had 
best  take. 

A  woman  came  past  her,  and  stopped  and  looked. 

The  moonlight  was  strong  upon  her  face. 

"  You  are  a  handsome  wench,"  said  the  wayfarer,  who 
was  elderly  and  of  pleasant  visage ;  "  too  handsome,  a 
vast  deal,  to  be  sitting  alone  like  one  lost.  What  is  the 
matter?" 

"  Nothing,"  she  answered. 

The  old  reserve  clung  to  her  and  fenced  her  secret  in, 
36* 


426  FOLLE-FARINE. 

as  the  prickles  of  a  cactus-hedge  may  fence  in  the  mag- 
nolia's flowers  of  snow. 

"  What,  then  ?     Have  you  a  home  ?" 

"No." 

"  Eh  !     You  must  have  a  lover  ?" 

Folle-Farine's  lips  grew  whiter,  and  she  shrunk  a  little ; 
but  she  answered  steadily^ — 

"No." 

"  No !  And  at  your  age  ;  and  handsome  as  a  ripe,  red 
apple, — with  your  skin  of  satin,  and  your  tangle  of  hair  ! 
Fie,  for  shame  1  Are  the  men  blind  ?  Where  do  you  rest 
to-night  F» 

"I  am  going  on — south." 

"  And  mean  to  walk  all  night  ?  Pooh  !  Come  home 
with  me,  and  sup  and  sleep.  I  live  hard  by,  just  inside 
the  walls." 

Folle-Farine  opened  her  great  eyes  wide.  It  was  the 
first  creature  who  had  ever  offered  her  hospitality.  It 
was  an  old  woman,  too;  there  could  be  nothing  but 
kindness  in  the  offer,  she  thought;  and  kindness  was 
so  strange  to  her,  that  it  troubled  her  more  than  did 
cruelty.  * 

"  You  are  good,"  she  said,  gratefully, — "  very  good ; 
but  I  cannot  come." 

"  Cannot  come  ?     Why,  then  ?" 

"  Because  I  must  go  on  to  Paris ;  I  cannot  lose  an  hour. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  good  of  you." 

The  old  woman  laughed  roughly. 

u  Oh-ho !  the  red  apple  must  go  to  Paris.  No  other 
market  grand  enough  !     Is  that  it?" 

"  I  do  not  know  what  you  mean." 

"  But  stay  with  me  to-night.  The  roads  are  dangerous. 
There  are  vagrants  and  ill-livers  about.  There  are  great 
fogs,  too,  in  this  district ;  and  you  will  meet  drunken  sol- 
diers and  beggars  who  will  rob  you.  Come  home  with 
me.  I  have  a  pretty  little  place,  though  poor  ;  and  you 
shall  have  such  fare  as  I  give  my  own  daughters.  And 
maybe  you  will  see  two  or  three  of  the  young  nobles. 
They  look  in  for  a  laugh  and  a  song — all  innocent :  my 
girls  are  favorites.  Come,  it  is  not  a  stone's  throw 
through  the  south  gate." 


FOLLE-FMUNE.  42 1 

"You  are  good;  but  I  cannot  come.  As  for  the 
road,  I  am  not  afraid.  I  have  a  good  knife,  and  I  am 
strong." 

She  spoke  in  all  unconsciousness,  in  her  heart  thankful 
to  this,  the  first  human  creature  that  had  ever  offered  her 
shelter  or  good  nature. 

The  woman  darted  one  sharp  look  at  her,  venomous  as 
an  adder's  bite ;  then  bade  her  a  short  good-night,  and 
went  on  her  way  to  the  gates  of  the  town. 

Folle-Farine  rose  up  and  walked  on,  taking  her  own 
southward  road. 

She  was  ignorant  of  any  peril  that  she  had  escaped. 
She  did  not  know  that  the  only  animals  which  prey  upon 
the  young  of  their  own  sex  and  kind  are  women. 

She  was  very  tired  ;  long  want  of  sleep,  anguish,  and 
bodily  fatigue  made  her  dull,  and  too  exhausted  to  keep 
long  upon  her  feet.  She  looked  about  her  for  some  place 
of  rest ;  and  she  knew  that  if  she  did  not  husband  her 
strength,  it  might  fail  her  ere  she  reached  him,  and  stretch 
her  on  a  sick-bed  in  some  hospital  of  the  poor. 

She  passed  two  or  three  cottages  standing  by  the  road- 
side, with  light  gleamiug  through  their  shutters  ;  but  she 
did  not  knock  at  any  one  of  them.  She  was  afraid  of 
spending  her  three  copper  coins  ;  and  she  was  too  proud 
to  seek  food  or  lodging  as  an  alms. 

By-and-by  she  came  to  a  little  shed,  standing  where 
no  house  was.  She  looked  into  it,  and  saw  it  full  of  the 
last  season's  hay,  dry  and  sweet-smelling,  tenanted  only 
by  a  cat  rolled  round  in  slumber. 

She  crept  into  it,  and  laid  herself  down  and  slept,  the 
bright  starry  skies  shining  on  her  through  the  open  space 
that  served  for  entrance,  the  clatter  of  a  little  brook  under 
the  poplar-trees  the  only  sound  upon  the  quiet  air. 

Footsteps  went  past  twice  or  thrice,  and  once  a  wagon 
rolled  lumbering  by;  but  no  one  came  thither  to  disturb 
her,  and  she  sank  into  a  fitful  heavy  sleep. 

At  daybreak  she  was  again  afoot,  always  on  the  broad 
road  to  the  southwest. 

With  one  of  her  coins  she  bought  a  loaf  and  a  draught 
of  milk,  at  a  hamlet  through  which  she  went.  She  was 
surprised  to  find  that  people  spoke  to  her  without  a  curse 


428  FOLLE-FARINE. 

or  taunt,  and  dealt  with  her  as  with  any  other  human 
being. 

Insensibly  with  the  change  of  treatment,  and  with  the 
fresh,  sweet  air,  and  with  the  brisk  movement  that  bore 
her  on  her  way,  her  heart  grew  lighter,  and  her  old  daunt- 
less spirit  rose  again. 

She  would  find  him,  she  thought,  as  soon  as  ever  she 
entered  Paris ;  and  she  would  watch  over  him,  and  only 
go  near  him  if  he  needed  her.     And  then,  and  then 

But  her  thoughts  went  no  further.  She  shut  the  future 
out  from  her  ;  it  appalled  her.  Only  one  thing  was  clear 
before  her — that  she  would  get  him  the  greatness  that  he 
thirsted  for,  if  any  payment  of  her  body  or  her  soul,  her 
life  or  her  death,  could  purchase  it. 

A  great  purpose  nerves  the  life  it  lives  in,  so  that  no 
personal  terrors  can  assail,  nor  any  minor  woes  afflict  it. 
Hunger,  thirst,  fatigue,  hardship,  danger, — these  were  all 
in  her  path,  and  she  had  each  in  turn ;  but  not  one  of 
them  unnerved  her. 

To  reach  Paris,  she  felt  that  she  would  have  walked 
through  flames,  or  fasted  forty  days. 

For  two  days  and  nights  she  went  on — days  cloudless, 
nights  fine  and  mild ;  then  came  a  day  of  storm — sharp 
hail  and  loud  thunder.  She  went  on  through  it  all  the 
same  ;  the  agony  in  her  heart  made  the  glare  of  lightning 
and  the  roar  of  winds  no  more  to  her  than  the  sigh  of  an 
April  breeze  over  a  primrose  bank. 

She  had  various  fortunes  on  her  way. 

A  party  of  tramps  crossing  a  meadow  set  on  her,  and 
tried  to  insult  her  ;  she  showed  them  her  knife,  and,  with 
the  blade  bare  against  her  throat,  made  them  fall  back, 
and  scattered  them. 

A  dirty  and  tattered  group  of  gypsies,  swatting  in  a  dry 
ditch  under  a  tarpaulin,  hailed  her,  and  wanted  her  to  join 
with  them  and  share  their  broken  food.  She  eluded  them 
with  disgust;  they  were  not  like  the  gitanos  of  the  Lie- 
bana,  and  she  took  them  to  be  beggars  and  thieves,  as, 
indeed,  they  were. 

At  a  little  wayside  cabin,  a  girl,  with  a  bright  rosy 
face,  spoke  softly  and  cheerily  to  her,  and  bade  her  rest 
awhile  on  the  bench  in  the  porch  under  the  vines  j  and 


FOLLE-FARINE.  429 

brought  out  some  white  pigeons  to  show  her ;  and  asked 
her,  with  interest,  whence  she  came.  And  she,  in  her 
fierceness  and  her  shyness,  was  touched,  and  wondered 
greatly  that  any  female  thing  could  be  thus  good. 

She  met  an  old  man  with  an  organ  on  his  back,  and  a 
monkey  on  his  shoulder.  He  was  old  and  infirm.  She 
carried  his  organ  for  him  awhile,  as  they  went  along  the 
same  road ;  and  he  was  gentle  and  kind  in  return,  and 
made  the  route  she  had  to  take  clear  to  her,  and  told  her, 
with  a  shake  of  his  head,  that  Paris  would  be  either  hell 
or  heaven  to  such  as  she.  And  she,  hearing,  smiled  a 
little,  for  the  first  time  since  she  had  left  Ypres,  and 
thought — heaven  or  hell,  what  would  it  matter  which,  so 
long  as  she  found  Arslan  ? 

Of  Dante  she  had  never  heard  ;  but  the  spirit  of  the 
"questi  chi  max  da  me  non  piu  diviso"  dwells  untaught 
in  every  great  love. 

Once,  at  night,  a  vagrant  tried  to  rob  her,  having 
watched  her  count  the  gold  and  notes  which  she  carried 
in  her  girdle.  He  dragged  her  to  a  lonely  place,  and 
snatched  at  the  red  sash,  grasping  the  money  with  it ; 
but  she  was  too  quick  for  him,  and  beat  him  off  in  such  a 
fashion  that  he  slunk  away  limping,  and  told  his  fellows 
to  beware  of  her ;  for  she  had  the  spring  of  a  cat,  and  the 
stroke  of  a  swan's  wing. 

On  the  whole,  the  world  seemed  better  to  her  than  it 
had  done  :  the  men  were  seldom  insolent,  taking  warning 
from  the  look  in  her  flashing  eyes  and  the  straight  carriage 
of  her  flexile  frame  ;  and  the  women  more  than  once  were 
kind. 

Many  peasants  passed  her  on  their  market-mules,  and 
many  carriers'  carts  and  farm-wagons  went  by  along  the 
sunny  roads. 

Sometimes  their  drivers  called  to  her  to  get  up,  and 
gave  her  a  lift  of  a  league  or  two  on  their  piles  of  grass, 
of  straw,  or  among  their  crates  of  cackling  poultry,  as 
they  made  their  slow  way  between  the  lines  of  the  trees, 
with  their  horses  nodding  heavily  under  the  weight  of 
their  uncouth  harness. 

All  this  while  she  never  touched  the  gold  that  he  had 
given   her.      Yery  little  food  sufficed  to  her :  she  had 


430  FOLLE-FARWE. 

been  hardily  reared ;  and  for  the  little  she  had  she  worked 
always,  on  her  way. 

A  load  carried,  a  lost  sheep  fetched  in,  some  wood 
hewn  and  stacked,  a  crying  calf  fed,  a  cabbage-patch  dug 
or  watered,  these  got  her  the  simple  fare  which  she  fed 
on ;  and  for  lodging  she  was  to  none  indebted,  preferring 
to  lie  down  by  the  side  of  the  cows  in  their  stalls,  or 
under  a  stack  against  some  little  blossoming  garden. 

The  people  had  no  prejudice  against  her:  she  found 
few  foes,  when  she  had  left  the  district  that  knew  the 
story  of  Reine  Flam  ma;  they  were,  on  the  contrary, 
amused  with  her  strange  picture-like  look,  and  awed  with 
the  sad  brevity  of  her  speech  to  them.  Sometimes  it 
chanced  to  her  to  get  no  tasks  of  any  sort  to  do,  and  at 
these  times  she  went  without  food  :  touch  his  gold  she 
would  not.  On  the  road  she  did  what  good  she  could ; 
she  walked  a  needless  league  to  carry  home  a  child  who 
had  broken  his  leg  in  a  lonely  lane ;  she  sought,  in  a 
foggy  night,  for  the  straying  goat  of  a  wretched  old 
woman  ;  she  saved  an  infant  from  the  flames  in  a  little 
cabin  burning  in  the  midst  of  the  green  fields :  she  did 
what  came  in  her  path  to  do.  For  her  heart  was  half  - 
broken  ;  and  this  was  her  way  of  prayer. 

So,  by  tedious  endeavor,  she  won  her  passage  wearily 
towards  Paris. 

She  had  been  nine  days  on  the  road,  losing  her  way  at 
times,  and  having  often  wearily  to  retrace  her  steps. 

On  the  tenth  day  she  came  to  a  little  town  lying  in  a 
green  hollow  amidst  woods. 

It  had  an  ancient  church  ;  the  old  sweet  bells  were 
ringing  their  last  mid-day  mass,  Salutaris  hostia  ;  a  crum- 
bling fortress  of  the  Angevine  kings  gave  it  majesty  and 
shadow;  it  was  full  of  flowers  and  of  trees,  and  had 
quaint,  quiet,  gray  streets,  hilly  and  shady,  that  made 
her  think  of  the  streets  round  about  the  cathedral  of  her 
mother's  birthplace,  away  northwestward  in  the  white 
sea-mists. 

When  she  entered  it,  noon  had  just  sounded  from  all 
its  many  clocks  and  chimes.  The  weather  was  hot,  and 
she  was  very  tired.  She  had  not  eaten  any  food,  save 
some  berries  and  green  leaves,  for  more  than  forty  hours. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  431 

She  had  been  refused  anything  to  do  in  all  places ;  and 
she  had  no  money — except  that  gold  of  his. 

There  was  a  little  tavern,  vine-shaded  and  bright  with 
a  Quatre  Saisons  rose  that  hid  its  casements.  She  asked 
there,  timidly,  if  there  were  any  task  she  might  do, — to 
fetch  water,  to  sweep,  to  break  wood,  to  drive  or  to  stable 
a  mule  or  a  horse. 

They  took  her  to  be  a  gypsy ;  they  ordered  her  roughly 
to  be  gone. 

Through  the  square  window  she  could  see  food  —  a 
big  juicy  melon  cut  in  halves,  sweet  yellow  cakes,  warm 
and  crisp  from  the  oven,  a  white  chicken,  cold  and  dressed 
with  cresses,  a  jug  of  milk,  an  abundance  of  bread.  And 
her  hunger  was  very  great. 

Nine  days  of  sharper  privation  than  even  that  to  which 
she  had  been  inured  in  the  penury  of  Ypres  had  made 
her  cheeks  hollow  and  her  limbs  fleshless ;  and  a  con- 
tinual consuming  heat  and  pain  gnawed  at  her  chest. 

She  sat  on  a  bench  that  was  free  to  all  wayfarers,  and 
looked  at  the  food  in  the  tavern  kitchen.  It  tempted  her 
with  the  terrible  animal  ravenousness  begotten  by  long 
fast.  She  wanted  to  fly  at  it  as  a  starved  dog  flies.  A 
rosy-faced  woman  cut  up  the  chicken  on  a  china  dish, 
singing. 

Folle-Farine,  outside,  looked  at  her,  and  took  courage 
from  her  smiling  face. 

"  Will  you  give  me  a  little  work  ?"  she  murmured. 
"Anything — anything — so  that  I  may  get  bread." 

"  You  are  a  gypsy,"  answered  the  woman,  ceasing  to 
smile.     "  Go  to  your  own  folk." 

And  she  would  not  offer  her  even  a  plate  of  broken 
victuals. 

Folle-Farine  rose  and  walked  wearily  away.  She 
could  not  bear  the  sight  of  the  food  ;  she  felt  that  if  she 
looked  at  it  longer  she  would  spring  on  it  like  a  wolf. 
But  to  use  his  gold  never  occurred  to  her.  She  would 
have  bitten  her  tongue  through  in  famine  ere  she  would 
have  taken  one  coin  of  it. 

As  she  went,  being  weak  from  long  hunger  and  the 
stroke  of  the  sunrays,  she  stumbled  and  fell.  She  re- 
covered herself  quickly ;  but  in  the  fall  the  money  had 


432  FOLLE-FARINE. 

shaken  itself  from  her  sash,  and  been  scattered  with  a 
ringing  sound  upon  the  stones. 

The  woman  in  the  tavern  window  raised  a  loud  cry  ! 

"  Oh-he  1  the  wicked  liar ! — to  beg  bread  while  her 
waistband  is  stuffed  with  gold  like  a  turkey  with  chest- 
nuts !  What  a  rogue  to  try  and  dupe  poor  honest  people 
like  us!     Take  her  to  prison." 

The  woman  cried  loud ;  there  were  half  a  dozen  stout 
serving- wenches  and  stable-lads  about  in  the  little  street, 
with  several  boys  and  children.  Indignant  at  the  thought 
of  an  attempted  fraud  upon  their  charity,  and  amazed  at 
the  flash  and  the  fall  of  the  money,  they  rushed  on  her 
with  shrieks  of  rage  and  scorn,  with  missiles  of  turf  and 
stone,  with  their  brooms  raised  aloft,  or  their  dogs  set  to 
rage  at  her. 

She  had  not  time  to  gather  up  the  coins  and  notes ; 
she  could  only  stand  over  and  defend  them.  Two  beggar- 
boys  made  a  snatch  at  the  tempting  heap ;  she  drew  her 
knife  to  daunt  them  with  the  sight  of  it.  The  people 
shrieked  at  sight  of  the  bare  blade;  a  woman  selling 
honeycomb  and  pots  of  honey  at  a  bench  under  a  lime- 
tree  raised  a  cry  that  she  had  been  robbed.  It  was  not 
true;  but  a  street  crowd  always  loves  a  lie,  and  never 
risks  spoiling,  by  sifting,  it. 

The  beggar-lads  and  the  two  serving-wenches  and  an 
old  virago  from  a  cottage  door  near  set  upon  her,  and 
scrambled  together  to  drive  her  away  from  the  gold  and 
share  it.  Resolute  to  defend  it  at  any  peril,  she  set  her 
heel  down  on  it,  and,  with  her  back  against  the  tree, 
stood  firm ;  not  striking,  but  with  the  point  of  the  knife 
outward. 

One  of  the  boys,  maddened  to  get  the  gold,  darted 
forward,  twisted  his  limbs  round  her,  and  struggled  with 
her  for  its  possession.  In  the  struggle  he  wounded 
himself  upon  the  steel.  His  arm  bled  largely  ;  he  filled 
the  air  with  his  shrieks ;  the  people,  furious,  accused  her 
of  his  murder. 

Before  five  minutes  had  gone  by  she  was  seized,  over- 
powered by  numbers,  cuffed,  kicked,  upbraided  with  every 
name  of  infamy,  and  dragged  as  a  criminal  up  the  little 
steep  stony  street  in  the  blaze  of  the  noonday  sun,  whilst 


FOLLE-FARINE.  433 

on  each  side  the  townsfolk  looked  out  from  their  doorways 
and  their  balconies  and  cried  out : 

"  What  is  it  ?  Oh-he  !  A  brawling  gypsy,  who  has 
stolen  something,  and  has  stabbed  poor  little  Freki,  the 
blind  man's  son,  because  he  found  her  out.  What  is  it  ? 
Au  violon  1 — au  violon  /" 

To  which  the  groups  called  back  again : 

"A  thief  of  a  gypsy,  begging  alms  while  she  had  stolen 
gold  on  her.  She  has  stabbed  poor  little  Freki,  the  blind 
cobbler's  son,  too.  We  think  he  is  dead."  And  the 
people  above,  in  horror,  lifted  their  hands  and  eyes,  and 
shouted  afresh,  "Au  violon! — au  violon!" 

Meanwhile  the  honey-seller  ran  beside  them,  crying 
aloud  that  she  bad  been  robbed  of  five  broad  golden  pieces. 

It  was  a  little  sunny  country-place,  very  green  with 
trees  and  grass,  filled  usually  with  few  louder  sounds  than 
the  cackling  of  geese  and  the  dripping  of  the  well-water. 

But  its  stones  wTere  sharp  and  rough ;  its  voices  were 
shrill  and  fierce  ;  its  gossips  were  cruel  and  false  of  tongue; 
its  justice  was  very  small,  aud  its  credulity  was  measure- 
less. A  girl,  barefoot  and  bareheaded,  with  eyes  of  the 
East,  and  a  knife  in  her  girdle,  teeth  that  met  in  their 
youngsters'  wrist,  and  gold  pieces  that  scattered  like  dust 
from  her  bosom, — such  a  one  could  have  no  possible  inno- 
cence in  their  eyes,  such  a  one  was  condemned  so  soon  as 
she  was  looked  at  when  she  was  dragged  among  them  up 
their  hilly  central  way. 

She  had  had  money  on  her,  and  she  had  asked  for  food 
on  the  plea  of  being  starved ;  that  was  fraud  plain  enough, 
even  for  those  who  were  free  to  admit  that  the  seller  of 
the  honey-pots  had  never  been  overtrue  of  speech,  and 
had  never  owned  so  much  as  five  gold  pieces  ever  since 
her  first  bees  had  sucked  their  first  spray  of  heath-bells. 

No  one  had  any  mercy  on  a  creature  who  had  money, 
and  yet  asked  for  work ;  as  to  her  guilt,  there  could  be  no 
question. 

She  was  hurried  before  the  village  tribune,  and  cast 
with  horror  into  the  cell  where  all  accused  waited  their 
judgment.  t 

It  was  a  dusky,  loathsome  place,  dripping  with  damp, 
half  underground,  strongly  grilled  with  iron,  and  smelling 

37 


434  FOLLE-FARINE. 

foully  from  the  brandy  and  strong  smoke  of  two  drunk- 
ards who  had  been  its  occupants  the  previous  night. 

There  they  left  her,  taking  away  her  knife  and  her 
money. 

She  did  not  resist.  It  was  not  her  nature  to  rebel 
futilely;  and  they  had  fallen  on  her  six  to  one,  and  had 
bound  her  safely  with  cords  ere  they  had  dragged  her 
away  to  punishment. 

The  little  den  was  visible  to  the  highway  through  a 
square  low  grating.  Through  this  they  came  and  stared, 
and  mouthed,  and  mocked,  and  taunted,  and  danced  before 
her.     To  bait  a  gypsy  was  fair  pastime. 

Everywhere,  from  door  to  door,  the  blind  cobbler,  with 
his  little  son,  and  the  woman  who  sold  honey  told  their 
tale, — how  she  had  stabbed  the  little  lad  and  stolen  the 
gold  that  the  brave  bees  had  brought  their  mistress,  and 
begged  for  food  when  she  had  had  money  enough  on  her 
to  buy  a  rich  man's  feast.  It  was  a  tale  to  enlist  against 
her  all  the  hardest  animosities  of  the  poor.  The  village 
rose  against  her  in  all  its  little  homes  as  though  she  had 
borne  fire  and  sword  into  its  midst. 

If  the  arm  of  the  law  had  not  guarded  the  entrance  of 
her  prison-cell,  the  women  would  have  stoned  her  to 
death,  or  dragged  her  out  to  drown  in  the  pond : — she 
was  worse  than  a  murderess  in  their  sight ;  and  one 
weak  man,  thinking  to  shelter  her  a  little  from  their  rage, 
quoted  against  her  her  darkest  crime  when  he  pleaded  for 
mercy  for  her  because  she  was  young  and  was  so  hand- 
some. 

The  long  hot  day  of  torment  passed  slowly  by. 

Outside  there  were  cool  woods,  flower-lilled  paths,  broad 
fields  of  grass,  children  tossing  blow-balls  down  the  wind, 
lovers  counting  the  leaves  of  yellow-eyed  autumn  daisies ; 
but  within  there  were  only  foul  smells,  intense  nausea, 
cruel  heats,  the  stings  of  a  thousand  insects,  the  buzz  of 
a  hundred  carrion-flies,  muddy  water,  and  black  mouldy 
bread. 

She  held  her  silence.  She  would  not  let  her  enemies 
see  that  they  hurt  her. 

When  the  day  had  gone  down,  and  the  people  had  tired 
of  their  sport  and  left  her  a  little  while,  an  old  feeble  man 


FOLLE-FARINE.  435 

stole  timidly  to  her,  glancing  round  lest  any  should  see 
his  charity  and  quote  it  as  a  crime,  and  tendered  her 
through  the  bars  with  a  gentle  hand  a  little  ripe  autumnal 
fruit  upon  a  cool  green  leaf. 

The  kindness  made  the  tears  start  to  eyes  too  proud  to 
weep  for  pain. 

She  took  the  peaches  and  thanked  him  lovingly  and 
gratefully;  cooled  her  aching,  burning,  dust-drenched 
throat  with  their  fragrant  moisture. 

"  Hush  !  it  is  nothing,"  he  whispered,  frightenedly, 
glancing  over  his  shoulder  lest  any  one  should  see.  "  But 
tell  me — tell  me — whv  did  you  say  you  starved  when  you 
had  all  that  gold  ?" 

"  I  did  starve,"  she  answered  him. 

"  But  why— with  all  that  gold  ?" 

"  It  was  another's." 

The  old  man  stared  at  her,  trembling  and  amazed. 

"  What — what !  die  of  hunger  and  keep  your  hands  off 
money  in  your  girdle?" 

A  dreary  smile  came  on  her  face. 

u  What !  is  that  inhuman  too  ?" 

11  Inhuman  IV  he  murmured.  "  Oh,  child — oh,  child, 
tell  any  tale  you  will,  save  such  a  tale  as  that !" 

And  he  stole  away  sorrowful,  because  sure  that  for  his 
fruit  of  charity  she  had  given  him  back  a  lie. 

He  shambled  away,  afraid  that  his  neighbors  should 
see  the  little  thing  which  he  had  done. 

She  was  left  alone. 

It  began  to  grow  dark.  She  felt  scorched  with  fever, 
and  her  head  throbbed.  Long  hunger,  intense  fatigue, 
and  all  the  agony  of  thought  in  which  she  had  struggled 
on  her  way,  had  their  reaction  on  her.  She  shivered 
where  she  sat  on  the  damp  straw  which  they  had  cast 
upon  the  stones ;  and  strange  noises  sang  in  her  ears,  and 
strange  lights  glimmered  and  flashed  before  her  eyes. 
She  did  not  know  what  ailed  her. 

The  dogs  came  and  smelt  at  her,  and  one  little  early 
robin  sang  a  twilight  song  in  an  elder-bush  near.  These 
were  the  only  things  that  had  any  pity  on  her. 

By-and-by,  when  it  was  quite  night,  they  opened  the 
grated  door  and  thrust  in  another  captive,  a  vagrant  they 


436  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

had  found  drunk  or  delirious  on  the  highroad,  whom 
they  locked  up  for  the  night,  that  on  the  morrow  they 
might  determine  what  to  do  with  him. 

He  threw  himself  heavily  forward  as  he  was  pushed  in 
by  the  old  soldier  whose  place  it  was  to  guard  the  miser- 
able den. 

She  shrank  away  into  the  farthest  corner  of  the  den, 
and  crouched  there,  breathing  heavily,  and  staring  with 
dull,  dilated  eyes. 

She  thought,  —  surely  they  could  not  mean  to  leave 
them  there  alone,  all  the  night  through,  in  the  horrible 
darkness. 

The  slamming  of  the  iron  door  answered  her ;  and  the 
old  soldier,  as  he  turned  the  rusty  key  in  the  lock,  grum- 
bled that  the  world  was  surely  at  a  pretty  pass,  when  two 
tramps  became  too  coy  to  roost  together.  And  he  stum- 
bled up  the  ladder-like  stairs  of  the  guard-house  to  his  own 
little  chamber;  and  there,  smoking  and  drinking,  and 
playing  dominoes  with  a  comrade,  dismissed  his  prisoners 
from  his  recollection. 

Meanwhile,  the  man  whom  he  had  thrust  into  the  cell 
was  stretched  where  he  had  fallen,  drunk  or  insensible, 
and  moaning  heavily. 

She,  crouching  against  the  wall,  as  though  praying  the 
stones  to  yield  and  hold  her,  gazed  at  him  with  horror 
and  pity  that  together  strove  in  the  confusion  of  her  dizzy 
brain,  and  made  her  dully  wonder  whether  she  were 
wicked  thus  to  shrink  in  loathing  from  a  creature  in  dis- 
tress so  like  her  own. 

The  bright  moon  rose  on  the  other  side  of  the  trees 
beyond  the  grating ;  its  light  fell  across  the  figure  of  the 
vagrant  whom  they  had  locked  in  with  her,  as  in  the 
wild-beast  shows  of  old  they  locked  a  lion  with  an  ante- 
lope in  the  same  cage — out  of  sport. 

She  saw  the  looming  massive  shadow  of  an  immense 
form,  couched  like  a  crouching  beast ;  she  saw  the  fire  of 
burning,  wide-open,  sullen  eyes ;  she  saw  the  restless, 
feeble  gesture  of  two  lean  hands,  that  clutched  at  the  bar- 
ren stones  with  the  futile  action  of  a  chained  vulture 
clutching  at  his  rock;  she  saw  that  the  man  suffered  hor- 
ribly, and  she  tried  to  pity  him — tried  not  to  shrink  from 


FOLLE-FARINE.  43? 

him — tried  to  tell  herself  that  he  might  be  as  guiltless  as 
was  herself.  But  she  could  not  prevail :  nature,  instinct, 
youth,  sex,  sickness,  exhaustion,  all  conquered  her,  and 
broke  her  strength.  She  recoiled  from  the  unbearable 
agony  of  that  horrible  probation  ;  she  sprang  to  the  grated 
aperture,  and  seized  the  iron  in  her  hands,  and  shook  it 
with  all  her  might,  and  tore  at  it,  and  bruised  her  chest 
and  arms  against  it,  and  clung  to  it  convulsively,  shriek 
after  shriek  pealing  from  her  lips. 

No  one  heard,  or  no  one  answered  to  her  prayer. 

A  stray  dog  came  and  howled  in  unison ;  the  moon 
sailed  on  behind  the  trees ;  the  old  soldier  above  slept 
over  his  toss  of  brandy  ;  at  thenmly  dwelling  near  they 
were  dancing  at  a  bridal,  and  had  no  ear  to  hear. 

The  passionate  outcries  wailed  themselves  to  silence 
on  her  trembling  mouth ;  her  strained  hands  gave  way 
from  their  hold  on  the  irons ;  she  grew  silent  from  sheer 
exhaustion,  and  dropped  in  a  heap  at  the  foot  of  the  iron 
door,  clinging  to  it,  and  crushed  against  it,  and  turning 
her  face  to  the  night  without,  feeling  some  little  sense  of 
solace  in  the  calm  clear  moon ; — some  little  sense  of  com- 
fort in  the  mere  presence  of  the  dog. 

Meanwhile  the  dusky  prostrate  form  of  the  man  had 
not  stirred. 

He  had  not  spoken,  save  to  curse  heaven  and  earth  and 
every  living  thing.  He  had  not  ceased  to  glare  at  her 
with  eyes  that  had  the  red  light  of  a  tiger's  in  their  pain. 
He  was  a  man  of  superb  stature  and  frame  ;  he  was 
worn  by  disease  and  delirium,  but  he  had  in  him  a  wild, 
leonine  tawny  beauty  still.  His  clothes  were  of  rags, 
and  his  whole  look  was  of  wretchedness ;  yet  there  was 
about  him  a  certain  reckless  majesty  and  splendor  still, 
as  the  scattered  beams  of  the  white  moonlight  broke 
themselves  upon  him. 

Of  a  sudden  he  spoke  aloud,  with  a  glitter  of  terrible 
laughter  on  his  white  teeth  and  his  flashing  eyes.  He 
was  delirious,  and  had  no  consciousness  of  where  he  was. 

"  The  fourth  bull  I  had  killed  that  Easter-day.  Look  ! 
do  you  see  ?  It  was  a  red  Andalusian.  He  had  wounded 
three  picadors,  and  ripped  the  bellies  of  eight  horses, — 
a  brave  bull,  but  I  was  one  too  many  for  him.     She  was 

37* 


438  FOLLE-FARTNE. 

there.  All  the  winter  she  had  flouted  over  and  taunted 
me ;  all  the  winter  she  had  cast  her  scorn  at  me — the 
beautiful  brown  thing,  with  her  cruel  eyes.  But  she  was 
there  when  I  slew  the  great  red  bull  —  straight  above 
there,  looking  over  her  fan.  Do  you  see  ?  And  when 
my  sword  went  up  to  the  hilt  in  his  throat,  and  the  brave 
blood  spouted,  she  laughed  such  a  little  sweet  laugh,  and 
cast  her  yellow  jasmine  flower  at  me,  down  in  the  blood 
and  the  sand  there.  And  that  night,  after  the  red  bull 
died,  the  rope  was  thrown  from  the  balcony  1  So — so  I 
Only  a  year  ago ;  only  a  year  ago !" 
Then  he  laughed  loud  again  ;  and,  laughing,  sang — 

"Avez-vous  vu  en  Barcelonne 
Une  belle  dame,  au  sein  bruni, 
Pale  comme  un  beau  soir  d'automne? 
C'est  ma  maitresse,  ma  lionne, 
La  Marchesa  d'Amagu'i." 

The  rich,  loud  challenge  of  the  love-song  snapped  short 
in  two.  With  a  groan  and  a  curse  he  flung  himself  on 
the  mud  floor,  and  clutched  at  it  with  his  empty  hands. 

"  Wine  I — wine  !"  he  moaned,  lying  athirst  there  as  the 
red  bull  had  lain  on  the  sands  of  the  circus ;  longing  for 
the  purple  draughts  of  his  old  feast-nights,  as  the  red  bull 
had  longed  for  the  mountain  streams,  so  cold  and  strong, 
of  its  own  Andalusian  birthplace. 

Then  he  laughed  again,  and  sang  old  songs  of  Spain, 
broken  and  marred  by  discord — their  majestic  melodies 
wedded  strangely  to  many  a  stave  of  lewd  riot  and  of 
amorous  verse. 

Then  for  awhile  he  was  quiet,  moaning  dully,  staring 
upward  at  the  white  face  of  the  moon. 

After  awhile  he  mocked  it — the  cold,  chaste  thing  that 
was  the  meek  trickster  of  so  many  mole-eyed  lords. 

Through  the  terror  and  the  confusion  of  her  mind, 
with  the  sonorous  melody  of  the  tongue,  with  the  flaming 
darkness  of  the  eyes,  with  the  wild  barbaric  dissolute 
grandeur  of  this  shattered  manhood,  vague  memories 
floated,  distorted  and  intangible,  before  her.  Of  deep 
forests  whose  shade  was  cool  even  in  midsummer  and  at 
mid-day;   of  glancing  torrents   rushing  through   their 


FOLLE-FARINE.  439 

beds  of  stone ;  of  mountain  snows  flashing  in  sunset  to  all 
the  hues  of  the  roses  that  grew  in  millions  by  the  river- 
water ;  of  wondrous  nights,  sultry  and  serene,  in  which 
women  with  flashing  glanced  and  bare  breasts  danced 
with  their  spangled  anklets  glittering  in  the  rays  of  the 
moon ;  of  roofless  palaces  where  the  crescent  still  glis- 
tened on  the  colors  of  the  walls ;  of  marble  pomps,  empty 
and  desolate,  where  only  the  oleander  held  pomp  and  the 
wild  fig-vine  held  possession ;  of  a  dead  nation  which  at 
midnight  thronged  through  the  desecrated  halls  of  its 
kings  and  passed  in  shadowy  hosts  through  the  fated 
land  which  had  rejected  the  faith  and  the  empire  of  Islam  } 
sowing  as  they  went  upon  the  blood-soaked  soil  the 
vengeance  of  the  dead  in  pestilence,  in  feud,  in  anarchy, 
in  barren  passions,  in  endless  riot  and  revolt,  so  that  no 
sovereign  should  sit  in  peace  on  the  ruined  throne  of  the 
Moslem,  and  no  light  shine  ever  again  upon  the  people 
whose  boast  it  once  had  been  that  on  them  the  sun  in 
heaven  never  set : — all  these  memories  floated  before  her 
and  only  served  to  make  her  fear  more  ghastly,  her  hor- 
ror more  unearthly. 

There  he  lay  delirious — a  madman  chained  at  her  feet, 
so  close  in  the  little  den  that,  shrink  as  she  would 
against  the  wall,  she  could  barely  keep  from  the  touch  of 
his  hands  as  they  were  flung  forth  in  the  air,  from  the 
scorch  of  his  breath  as  he  raved  and  cursed. 

And  there  was  no  light  except  the  fire  in  his  fierce,  hot 
eyes ;  except  the  flicker  of  the  moonbeam  through  the 
leaves. 

She  spent  her  strength  in  piteous  shrieks.  They  were 
the  first  cries  that  had  ever  broken  from  her  lips  for 
human  aid  ;  and  they  were  vain. 

The  guard  above  slept  heavy  with  brandy  and  a 
dotard's  dreams.  The  village  was  not  aroused.  What 
cared  any  of  its  sleepers  how  these  outcasts  fared  ? 

She  crouched  in  the  farthest  corner,  when  her  agony 
had  spent  itself  in  the  passion  of  appeal. 

The  night — would  it  ever  end  ? 

Besides  its  horror,  all  the  wretchedness  and  bondage 
of  her  old  life  seemed  like  peace  and  freedom. 

Writhing  in  his  pain  and  frenzy,  the  wounded  drunk- 


440  FOLLE-FARWE. 

ard  struck  her — all  unconscious  of  the  blow — across  her 
eyes,  and  fell,  contorted  and  senseless,  with  his  head  upon 
her  knees. 

He  had  ceased  to  shout  his  amorous  songs,  and  vaunt 
his  lustful  triumphs.  His  voice  was  hollow  in  his  throat, 
and  babbled  with  a  strange  sound,  low  and  fast  and  in- 
articulate. 

"In  the  little  green  wood — in  the  little  green  wood," 
he  muttered.  •  Hark!  do  you  hear  the  mill-water  run  ? 
She  looked  so  white  and  so  cold  ;  and  they  all  called  her 
a  saint.  What  could  a  man  do  but  kill  that  ?  Does  she 
cry  out  against  me  ?  You  say  so  ?  You  lie.  You  lie 
— be  you  devil  or  god.  You  sit  on  a  great  white  throne 
and  judge  us  all.  So  they  say.  You  can  send  us  to  hell  ? 
.  .  .  .  Well,  do.  You  shall  never  wring  a  word 
from  her  to  my  hurt.  She  thinks  I  killed  the  child  ? 
Nay — that  I  swear.     Phratos  knew,  I  think.     But  he  is 

dead  ; — so   they   say.      Ask   him My   brown 

queen,  who  saw  me  kill  the  red  bull, — are  you  there  too  ? 
Ay.  How  the  white  jewels  shine  in  your  breast  1 
Stoop  a  little,  and  kiss  me.  So !  Your  mouth  burns ; 
and  the  yellow  jasmine  flower — there  is  a  snake  in  it. 
Look!  You  love  me? — oh-ho  ! — what  does  your  priest 
say,  and  your  lord  ?  Love  ! — so  many  of  you  swore  that. 
But  she, — she,  standing  next  to  her  god  there, — I  hurt 
her  most,  and  yet  she  alone  of  you  all  says  nothing  1" 

When,  at  daylight,  the  people  unbarred  the  prison-door, 
they  found  the  sightless  face  of  the  dead  man  lying  full 
in  the  light  of  the  sun :  beside  him  the  girl  crouched  with 
a  senseless  stare  in  the  horror  of  her  eyes,  and  on  her  lips 
a  ghastly  laugh. 

For  Folle-Farine  had  entered  at  length  into  her 
Father's  kingdom. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  441 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

For  many  months  she  knew  nothing  of  the  flight  of 
time.  All  she  was  conscious  of  were  burning  intolerable 
pain,  continual  thirst,  and  the  presence  of  as  an  iron  hand 
upon  her  head,  weighing  down  the  imprisoned  brain.  All 
she  saw  in  the  horrible  darkness,  which  no  ray  of  light 
ever  broke,  was  the  face  of  Thanatos,  with  the  white  rose 
pressed  against  his  mouth,  to  whom  endlessly  she 
stretched  her  arms  in  vain  entreaty,  but  who  said  only, 
with  the  passionless  pity  of  his  gaze,  "  I  come  in  my 
own  time,  and  neither  tarry  nor  hasten  for  any  supplica- 
tion of  a  mortal  creature." 

She  lived  as  a  reed  torn  up  from  the  root  may  live  by 
the  winds  that  waft  it,  by  the  birds  that  carry  it,  by  the 
sands  that  draw  its  fibers  down  into  themselves,  to  root 
afresh  whether  it  will  or  no. 

"  The  reed  was  worthy  to  die  ! — the  reed  was  worthy 
to  die  L"  was  all  that  she  said,  again  and  again,  lying 
staring  with  her  hot  distended  eyes  into  the  void  as  of 
perpetual  night,  which  was  all  that  she  saw  around  her. 
The  words  were  to  those  who  heard  her,  however,  the 
mere  meaningless  babble  of  madness. 

When  they  had  found  her  in  the  cell  of  the  guard- 
house, she  was  far  beyond  any  reach  of  harm  from  them, 
or  any  sensibility  of  the  worst  which  they  might  do  to 
her.  She  was  in  a  delirious  stupor,  which  left  her  no 
more  sense  of  place,  or  sound,  or  time  than  if  her  brain 
had  been  drugged  to  the  agonies  and  ecstasies  of  the 
opium-eater. 

They  found  her  homeless,  friendless,  nameless;  a 
thing  accursed,  destitute,  unknown;  as  useless  and  as 
rootless  as  the  dead  Spanish  vagrant  lying  on  the  stones 
beside  her.  They  cast  him  to  the  public  ditch ;  they 
sent  her  to  the  public  sick  wards,  a  -league  away ;  an 
ancient  palace,  whose  innumerable  chambers  and  whose 


442  FOLLE-FARINE. 

vast  corridors  had  been  given  to  a  sisterhood  of  mercy, 
and  employed  for  nigh  a  century  as  a  public  hospital. 

In  this  prison  she  lay  without  any  sense  of  the  passing 
of  hours  and  days  and  months. 

The  accusation  against  her  fell  to  the  ground  harm- 
less ;  no  one  pursued  it :  the  gold  was  gone — somewhere, 
nowhere.  No  one  knew,  unless  it  were  the  bee-wife,  and 
she  held  her  peace. 

She  was  borne,  senseless,  to  the  old  hospice  in  the 
great,  dull,  saintly,  historic  town,  and  there  perished 
from  all  memories  as  all  time  perished  to  her. 

Once  or  twice  the  sister  of  charity  who  had  the  charge 
of  her  sought  to  exorcise  the  demon  tormenting  this 
stricken  brain  and  burning  body,  by  thrusting  into  the 
hands  that  clinched  the  air  a  leaden  image  or  a  cross  of 
sacred  wood.  But  those  heathen  hands,  even  in  delirium, 
threw  those  emblems  away  always,  and  the  captive  would 
mutter  in  a  vague  incoherence  that  froze  the  blood  of  her 
hearers : 

11  The  old  gods  are  not  dead ;  they  only  wait — they 
only  wait !  I  am  theirs — theirs  !  They  forget,  perhaps. 
But  I  remember.  I  keep  my  faith  ;  they  must  keep  theirs, 
for  shame's  sake.  Heaven  or  hell  ?  what  does  it  matter  ? 
Can  it  matter  to  me,  so  that  he  has  his  desire  ?  And 
that  they  must  give,  or  break  faith,  as  men  do.  Perse- 
phone ate  the  pomegranate, — you  know — and  she  went 
back  to  hell.  So  will  I — if  they  will  it.  What  can  it 
matter  how  the  reed  dies  ? — by  fire,  by  steel,  by  storm  ? 
— what  matter,  so  that  the  earth  hear  the  music?  Ah, 
God  !  the  reed  was  found  worthy  to  die !  And  I — I  am 
too  vile,  too  poor,  too  shameful  even  for  that  /" 

And  then  her  voice  would  rise  in  a  passion  of  hysteric 
weeping,  or  sink  away  into  the  feeble  wailing  of  the 
brain,  mortally  stricken  and  yet  dimly  sensible  of  its  own 
madness  and  weakness ;  and  all  through  the  hours  she, 
in  her  unconsciousness,  would  lament  for  this — for  this 
alone — that  the  gods  had  not  deemed  her  worthy  of  the 
stroke  of  death  by  which,  through  her,  a  divine  melody 
might  have  arisen,  and  saved  the  world. 

For  the  fable — which  had  grown  to  hold  the  place  of 
so  implicit  a  faith  to  her — was  in  her  delirium  always 


FOLLE-FARINE.  443 

present  with  her  ;  and  she  had  retained  no  sense  of  her- 
self except  as  the  bruised  and  trampled  reed  which  man 
and  the  gods  alike  had  rejected  as  unworthy  of  sacrifice. 

All  the  late  autumn  and  the  early  winter  came  and 
went;  and  the  cloud  was  dark"  upon  her  mind,  and  the 
pain  of  the  blow  dealt  to  her  by  Taric's  hand  gnawed  at 
her  brain. 

When  the  winter  turned,  the  darkness  in  which  her 
reason  had  been  engulfed  began  to  clear,  little  by  little. 

As  the  first  small  trill  of  the  wren  stirred  the  silence 
in  the  old  elm-boughs ;  as  the  first  feeble  gleam  of  the 
new-year  sunshine  struggled  through  the  matted  branches 
of  the  yews  ;  as  the  first  frail  blossom  of  the  pale  hepatica 
timidly  peeped  forth  in  the  damp  moss-grown  walls  with- 
out, so  consciousness  slowly  returned  to  her.  She  was  so 
young ;  the  youth  in  her  refused  to  be  quenched,  and  re- 
covered its  hold  upon  life  as  did  the  song  of  the  birds, 
the  light  in  the  skies,  the  corn  in  the  seed-sown  earth. 

She  awakened  to  strength,  to  health,  to  knowledge  ; 
though  she  awoke  thus  blinded  and  confused  and  capable 
of  little  save  the  sense  of  some  loathsome  bondage,  of 
some  irreparable  loss,  of  some  great  duty  which  she  had 
left  undone,  of  some  great  errand  to  which  she  had  been 
summoned,  and  found  wanting. 

She  saw  four  close  stone  walls  around  her  ;  she  saw 
her  wrists  and  her  ankles  bound ;  she  saw  a  hole  high 
up  above  her  head,  braced  with  iron  bars,  which  served 
to  let  in  a  few  pallid  streaks  of  daylight  which  alone  ever 
found  their  way  thither ;  she  saw  a  black  cross  in  one 
corner,  and  before  it  two  women  in  black,  who  prayed. 

She  tried  to  rise,  and  could  not,  being  fettered.  She 
tore  at  the  rope  on  her  wrists  with  her  teeth,  like  a  young 
tigress  at  her  chains. 

They  essayed  to  soothe  her,  but  in  vain;  they  then 
made  trial  first  of  threats,  then  of  coercion ;  neither  af- 
fected her;  she  bit  at  the  knotted  cords  with  her  white, 
strong  teeth,  and,  being  unable  to  free  herself,  fell  back- 
ward in  a  savage  despair,  glaring  in  mute  impotent  rage 
upon  her  keepers. 

"I  must  go  to  Paris,"  she  muttered  again  and  again. 
"  I  must  go  to  Paris." 


444  FOLLE-FARINE. 

So  much  escaped  her; — but  her  secret  she  was  still 
strong  to  keep  buried  in  silence  in  her  heart,  as  she  had 
still  kept  it  even  in  her  madness. 

Her  old  strength,  her  old  patience,  her  old  ferocity  and 
stubbornness  and  habits  of  mute  resistance,  had  revived 
in  her  with  the  return  of  life  and  reason.  Slowly  she 
remembered  all  things — remembered  that  she  had  been 
accused  and  hunted  down  as  a  thief  and  brought  thither 
into  this  prison,  as  she  deemed  it,  where  the  closeuess 
of  the  walls  pent  her  in  and  shut  out  the  clouds  and  the 
stars,  the  water  and  the  moonrise,  the  flicker  of  the 
green  leaves  against  the  gold  of  sunset,  and  all  the  liberty 
and  loveliness  of  earth  and  air  for  which  she  was  devoured 
by  a  continual  thirst  of  longing,  like  the  thirst  of  the  caged 
lark  for  the  fair  heights  of  heaven. 

So  when  they  spoke  of  their  god,  she  answered  always 
as  the  lark  answers  when  his  jailers  speak  to  him  of 
song  : — "  Set  me  free." 

But  they  thought  this  madness  no  less,  and  kept  her 
bound  there  in  the  little  dark  stone  den,  where  no  sound 
ever  reached,  unless  it  were  the  wailing  of  a  bell,  and  no 
glimpse  of  the  sky  or  the  trees  could  ever  come  to  charm 
to  peaceful  rest  her  aching  eyes. 

At  length  they  grew  afraid'  of  what  they  did.  She  re- 
fused all  food ;  she  turned  her  face  to  the  wall ;  she 
stretched  herself  on  her  bed  of  straw  motionless  and 
rigid.  The  confinement,  the  absence  of  air,  were  a  living 
death  to  the  creature  whose  lungs  were  stifled  unless 
they  drank  in  the  fresh  cool  draught  of  winds  blowing 
unchecked  over  the  width  of  the  fields  and  forests,  and 
whose  eyes  ached  and  grew  blind  unless  they  could  gaze 
into  the  depths  of  free-flowing  water,  or  feed  themselves 
in  far-reaching  sight  upon  the  radiant  skies. 

The  errant  passions  in  her,  the  inborn  instincts  towards 
perpetual  liberty,  and  the  life  of  the  desert  and  of  the 
mountains  which  came  with  the  blood  of  the  Zingari, 
made  her  prison-house  a  torture  to  her  such  as  is  un- 
known to  the  house-born  and  hearth-fettered  races. 

If  this  wild  moorbird  died  of  self-imposed  famine  rather 
than  live  only  to  beat  its  cut  wings  against  the  four  walls 
of  their  pent  prison-house,  it  might  turn  ill  for  them- 


FOLLE-FARINE.  445 

selves;   so  the  religious   community  meditated.     They 
became  afraid  of  their  own  work. 

One  day  they  said  to  her : 

"  Eat  and  live,  and  you  will  be  set  free  to-morrow." 

She  turned  for  the  first  time,  and  lifted  her  face  from 
the  straw  in  which  she  buried  it,  and  looked  them  in  the 
eyes. 

"  Is  that  true  ?"  she  asked. 

"  Ay,"  they  answered  her.  "  We  swear  it  by  the  cross 
of  our  blessed  Master." 

"  If  a  Christian  swear  it, — it  must- be  a  lie,"  she  said, 
with  the  smile  that  froze  their  timid  blood. 

But  she  accepted  the  food  and  the  drink  which  they 
brought  her,  and  broke  her  fast,  and  slept  through  many 
hours  ;  strengthened,  as  by  strong  wine,  by  that  one  h^pe 
of  freedom  beneath  the  wide  pure  skies. 

She  asked  them  on  awakening  what  the  season  of  the 
year  was  then.     They  told  her  it  was  the  early  spring. 

"  The  spring,"  she  echoed  dully, — all  the  months  were 
a  blank  to  her,  which  had  rolled  by  since  that  red  autumn 
evening  when  in  the  cell  of  the  guard-house  the  voice  of 
Taric  had  chanted  in  drink  and  delirium  the  passion 
songs  of  Spain. 

"  Yes.  It  is  spring,"  they  said  again  ;  and  one  sister, 
younger  and  gentler  than  the  rest,  reached  from  its  place 
above  the  crucifix  the  bough  of  the  golden  catkins  of  the 
willow,  which  served  them  at  their  holy  season  as  an 
emblem  of  the  palms  of  Palestine. 

She  looked  at  the  drooping  grace  of  the  branches,  with 
their  buds  of  amber,  long  and  in  silence ;  then  with  a 
passion  of  weeping  she  turned  her  face  from  them  as  from 
the  presence  of  some  intolerable  memory. 

All  down  the  shore  of  the  river,  amongst  the  silver  of 
the  reeds,  the  willows  had  been  in  blossom  when  she  had 
first  looked  upon  the  face  of  Arslan. 

"  Stay  with  us,"  the  women  murmured,  drawn  to  her 
by  the  humanity  of  those  the  first  tears  that  she  had 
ever  shed  in  her  imprisonmeut.  "  Stay  with  us  ;  and  it 
shall  go  hard  if  we  cannot  find  a  means  to  bring  you  to 
eternal  peace." 

She  shook  her  head  wearily. 
38 


446  F0LLE-FAR1NE. 

"It  is  not  peace  that  I  seek,"  she  murmured. 

Peace  ? 

He  would  care  nothing  for  peace  on  earth  or  in  heaven, 
she  knew.  What  she  had  sought  to  gain  for  him — what 
she  would  seek  still  when  once  she  should  get  free — was 
the  eternal  conflict  of  a  great  fame  in  the  world  of  men ; 
since  this  was  the  only  fate  which  in  his  sight  had  any 
grace  or  any  glory  in  it. 

They  kept  their  faith  with  her.  They  opened  the  doors 
of  her  prison-house  and  bade  her  depart  in  peace,  pagan 
and  criminal  though  they  deemed  her. 

She  reeled  a  little  dizzily  as  the  first  blaze  of  the  full 
daylight  fell  on  her.  She  walked  out  with  unsteady 
steps  into  the  open  air  where  they  took  her,  and  felt  it 
coi  and  fresh  upon  her  cheek,  and  saw  the  blue  sky 
above  her. 

The  gates  which  they  unbarred  were  those  at  the  back 
of  the  hospital,  where  the  country  stretched  around. 
They  did  not  care  that  she  should  be  seen  by  the  people 
of  the  streets. 

She  was  left  alone  on  a  road  outside  the  great  building 
that  had  been  her  prison-house  ;  the  road  was  lull  of  light, 
it  was  straight  and  shadowless ;  there  was  a  tall  tree 
near  her  full  of  leaf;  there  was  a  little  bird  fluttering  in 
the  sand  at  her  feet ;  the  ground  was  wet,  and  sparkled 
with  rain-drops. 

All  the  little  things  came  to  her  like  the  notes  of  a  song 
heard  far  away — far  away — in  another  world.  They  were 
all  so  familiar,  yet  so  strange. 

There  was  a  little  yellow  flower  growing  in  a  tuft  of 
grasses  straight  in  front  of  her ;  a  little  wayside  weed ; 
a  root  and  blossom  of  the  field-born  celandine. 

She  fell  on  her  knees  in  the  dust  by  it,  and  laughed 
and  wept,  and,  quivering,  kissed  it  and  blessed  it  that  it 
grew  there.  It  was  the  first  thing  of  summer  and  of 
sunshine  that  she  had  seen  for  so  long. 

A  man  in  the  gateway  saw  her,  and  shook  her,  and 
bade  her  get  from  the  ground. 

"You  are  fitter  to  go  back  again,"  he  muttered ;  "you 
are  mad  still,  I  think." 

Like  a  hunted  animal  she  stumbled  to  her  feet  and  fled 


FOLLE-FARWE.  447 

from  him  ;  winged  by  the  one  ghastly  terror  that  they 
would  claim  her  and  chain  her  back  again. 

They  had  said  that  she  was  free  :  but  what  were  words  ? 
They  had  taken  her  once  ;  they  might  take  her  twice. 

She  ran,  and  ran,  and  ran. 

The  intense  fear  that  possessed  her  lent  her  irresistible 
force.  She  coursed  the  earth  with  the  swiftness  of  a 
hare.  She  took  no  heed  whence  she  went;  she  only 
knew  that  she  fled  from  that  one  unutterable  horror  of 
the  place.  She  thought  that  they  were  right ;  that  she 
was  mad. 

It  was  a  level,  green,  silent  country  which  was  round 
her,  with  little  loveliness  and  little  color;  but  as  she 
went  she  laughed  incessantly  in  the  delirious  gladness  of 
her  liberty. 

She  tossed  her  head  back  to  watch  the  flight  of  a  sin- 
gle swallow ;  she  caught  a  handful  of  green  leaves  and 
buried  her  face  in  them.  She  listened  in  a  very  agony 
of  memory  to  the  rippling  moisture  of  a  little  brook. 
She  followed  with  her  eyes  the  sweeping  vapors  of  the 
rain-clouds,  and  when  a  west  wind  rose  and  blew  a  clus- 
ter of  loose  apple-blossoms  between  her  eyes,  she  could 
no  longer  bear  the  passionate  pain  of  all  the  long-lost 
sweetness,  but,  flinging  herself  downward,  sobbed  with 
the  ecstasy  of  an  exile's  memories. 

The  hell  in  which  she  had  dwelt  had  denied  them  to 
her  for  so  long. 

"Ah,  God  1"  she  thought,  "I  know  now — one  cannot 
be  utterly  wretched  whilst  one  has  still  the  air  and  the 
light  and  the  winds  of  the  sky." 

And  she  arose,  calmer,  and  went  on  her  way ;  wonder- 
ing, even  in  that  hour,  why  men  and  women  trod  the 
daily  measures  of  their  lives  with  their  eyes  downward, 
and  their  ears  choked  with  the  dust,  hearkening  so  little  to 
the  sound  of  the  breeze  in  the  grasses,  looking  so  little 
to  the  passage  of  the  clouds  against  the  sun. 

When  the  first  blindness  and  rapture  of  her  liberty  had 
a  little  passed  away,  and  abated  in  violence,  she  stood  in 
the  midst  of  the  green  fields  and  the  fresh  woods,  a 
strange,  sad,  lonely  figure  of  absolute  desolation. 

Her  clothes  were  in  rags ;  her  red  girdle  had  been 


448  FOLLE-FARINE. 

changed  by  weather  to  a  dusky  purple ;  her  thick  cluster- 
ing hair  had  been  cut  to  her  throat ;  her  radiant  hues 
were  blanched,  and  her  immense  eyes  gazed  woefully 
from  beneath  their  heavy  dreamy  lids,  like  the  eyes  of  an 
antelope  whom  men  vainly  starve  in  the  attempt  to 
tame. 

She  knew  neither  where  to  go  nor  what  to  do.  She 
had  not  a  coin  nor  a  crust  upon  her.  She  could  not  tell 
where  she  then  stood,  nor  where  the  only  home  that  she 
had  ever  known  might  lie. 

She  had  not  a  friend  on  earth ;  and  she  was  seventeen 
years  old,  and  was  beautiful,  and  was  a  woman. 

She  stood  and  looked ;  she  did  not  weep ;  she  did  not 
pray  ;  her  heart  seemed  frozen  in  her.  She  had  the  gift 
she  had  craved, — and  how  could  she  use  it? 

The  light  was  obscured  by  clouds,  great,  sweet  rain- 
clouds  which  came  trooping  from  the  west.  Woods  were 
all  round,  and  close  against  her  were  low  brown  cattle, 
cropping  clovered  grass.  Away  on  the  horizon  was  a 
vague,  vast,  golden  cloud,  like  a  million  threads  of  gos- 
samer glowing  in  the  sun. 

She  did  not  know  what  it  was ;  yet  it  drew  her  eyes 
to  it.     She  thought  of  the  palaces. 

A  herdsman  came  by  her  to  the  cattle.  She  pointed 
to  the  cloud. 

"  What  is  that  light  ?"  she  asked  him. 

The  cowherd  stared  and  laughed. 

"  That  light  ?  It  is  only  the  sun  shining  on  the  domes 
and  the  spires  of  Paris." 

"  Paris !" 

She  echoed  the  name  with  a  great  sob,  and  crossed 
her  hands  upon  her  breast,  and  in  her  way  thanked  God. 

She  had  had  no  thought  that  she  could  be  thus  near  to  it. 

She  asked  no  more,  but  set  straight  on  her  way  thither. 
It  looked  quite  close. 

She  had  exhausted  the  scanty  strength  which  she  had 
in  her  first  flight;  she  could  go  but  slowly;  and  the 
roads  were  heavy  across  the  plowed  lands,  and  through 
the  edges  of  the  woods.  She  walked  on  and  on  till  it 
grew  dusk,  then  she  asked  of  a  woman  weeding  in  a  field 
how  far  it  might  be  yet  to  Paris. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  449 

The  woman  told  her  four  leagues  and  more. 

She  grew  deadly  cold  with  fear.  She  was  weak,  and 
she  had  no  hope  that  she  could  reach  it  before  dawn  ; 
and  she  had  nothing  with  which  to  buy  shelter  for  the 
night.  She  could  see  it  still ;  a  cloud,  now  as  of  fireflies, 
upon  the  purple  and  black  of  the  night ;  and  in  a  pas- 
sionate agony  of  longing  she  once  more  bent  her  limbs 
and  ran — thinking  of  him. 

To  her  the  city  of  the  world,  the  city  of  the  kings,  the 
city  of  the  eagles,  was  only  of  value  for  the  sake  of  this 
one  life  it  held. 

It  was  useless.  All  the  strength  she  possessed  was 
already  spent.  The  feebleness  of  fever  still  sang  in  her 
ears  and  trembled  in  her  blood.  She  was  sick  and  faint, 
and  very  thirsty. 

She  struck  timidly  at  a  little  cottage  door,  and  asked 
to  rest  the  night  there. 

The  woman  glanced  at  her  and  slammed  to  the  door. 
At  another  and  yet  another  she  tried  ;  but  at  neither  had 
she  any  welcome ;  they  muttered  of  the  hospitals  and 
drove  her  onward.  Finally,  tired  out,  she  dropped  down 
on  the  curled  hollow  of  an  old  oak  stump  that  stood 
by  the  wayside,  and  fell  asleep,  seeing  to  the  last  through 
her  sinking  lids  that  cloud  of  light  where  the  great  city 
lay. 

The  night  was  cold  ;  the  earth  damp ;  she  stretched  her 
limbs  out  wearily  and  sighed,  and  dreamed  that  Thanatos 
touched  her  with  his  asphodels  and  whispered,  "Come." 


38* 


450  FOLLE-FARINE. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

When  she  awoke  she  was  no  longer  in  the  open  air  by 
the  roadside,  and  the  gray  of  the  falling  night  about  her, 
and  the  wet  leaves  for  her  bed.  She  was  in  a  wide 
painted  chamber,  sweet  with  many  roses,  hung  with  deep 
hues  of  violet,  filled  with  gold  and  color  and  sculpture 
and  bronze,  duskily  beautiful  and  dimly  lighted  by  a 
great  wood  fire  that  glowed  upon  andirons  of  brass. 

On  the  wall  nearest  her  hung  all  alone  a  picture, — a 
picture  of  a  girl  asleep  in  a  scarlet  blaze  of  poppies,  above 
her  head  a  purple  butterfly,  and  on  her  breast  the  Red 
Mouse  of  the  Brocken. 

Opposite  to  it,  beside  the  hearth,  watching  her  with 
his  small  brilliant  eyes,  and  quite  motionless,  sat  the  old 
man  Sartorian,  who  had  kept  his  faith  with  her,  though 
the  gods  had  not  kept  theirs. 

And  the  picture  and  the  reality  grew  confused  before 
her,  and  she  knew  not  which  was  herself  and  which  her 
painted  likeness,  nor  which  was  the  little  red  mouse 
that  gibbered  among  the  red  flowers,  and  which  the 
little  old  man  who  sat  watching  her  with  the  fire-gleams 
bright  in  his  eyes ;  and  it  seemed  to  her  that  she  and  the 
picture  were  one,  and  he  and  the  mouse  were  one  like- 
wise 5  and  she  moaned  and  leaned  her  head  on  her  hands 
and  tried  to  think. 

The  heat  of  the  chamber,  and  the  strong  nourishment 
which  they  had  poured  down  her  throat  when  she  was 
insensible  of  anything  they  did  to  her,  had  revived  the 
life  in  her.  Memory  and  sense  returned  slowly  to  her ; 
what  first  awakened  was  her  one  passionate  desire,  so  in- 
tense that  it  became  an  instinct  stifling  every  other,  to  go 
on  her  way  to  the  city  that  had  flashed  in  its  golden  glory 
on  her  sight  one  moment,  only  the  next  to  disappear  into 
the  eternal  night. 


FOLLE-FARINF.  451 

"  Paris  1"  she  muttered,  mechanically,  as  she  lifted  her 
face  with  a  hopeless,  bewildered  prayer. 

"  Tell  me  the  way  to  Paris,"  she  muttered,  instinct- 
ively, and  she  tried  to  rise  and  walk,  not  well  knowing 
what  she  did. 

The  old  man  laughed  a  little,  silently. 

"  Ah-h-h  !  Women  are  the  only  peaches  that  roll  of  their 
own  accord  from  the  wall  to  the  wasp's  nest !" 

At  the  sound  of  his  voice  her  eyes  opened  wide  upon 
him  ;  she  knew  his  face  again. 

"Where  am  I  ?"  she  asked  him,  with  a  sharp  terror  in 
her  voice. 

"  In  my  house,"  he  said,  simply.  "  I  drove  by  you 
when  you  lay  on  the  roadside.  I  recognized  you.  When 
people  dream  of  immortality  they  generally  die  in  a  ditch. 
You  would  have  died  of  a  single  night  out  there.  I  sent 
my  people  for  you.  You  did  not  wake.  You  have  slept 
here  five  hours." 

"  Is  this  Rioz?"  She  could  not  comprehend;  a  horror 
seized  her,  lest  she  should  have  strayed  from  Paris  back 
into  her  mother's  province. 

"  No.  It  is  another  home  of  mine ;  smaller,  but  choicer 
maybe.    Who  has  cut  your  hair  close  ?" 

She  shuddered  and  turned  paler  with  the  memory  of 
that  ghastly  prison-house. 

"Well;  I  am  not  sure  but  that  you  are  handsomer, — 
almost.  A  sculptor  would  like  you  more  now, — what  a 
head  you  would  make  for  an  Anteros,  or  an  Icarus,  or  a 
Hyacinthusl  Yes — you  are  best  so.  You  have  been 
ill?" 

She  could  not  answer  ;  she  only  stared  at  him,  blankly, 
with  sad,  mindless,  dilated  eyes. 

"A  little  gold  !"  she  muttered,  "  a  little  gold  !" 

He  looked  at  her  awhile,  then  rose  and  went  and  sent 
his  handwomen,  who  took  her  to  an  inner  chamber,  and 
bathed  and  attended  her  with  assiduous  care.  She  was 
stupefied,  and  knew  not  what  they  did. 

They  served  her  tenderly.  They  bathed  her  tired  limbs 
and  laid  her,  as  gently  as  though  she  were  some  wounded 
royal  captive,  upon  a  couch  of  down. 

She  had  no  force  to  resist.     Her  eyes  were  heavy,  and 


452  FOLLE-FARINE. 

her  senses  were  obscured.  The  potence  of  the  draught 
which  they  had  forced  through  her  lips,  when  she  had 
been  insensible,  acted  on  her  as  an  anodyne.  She  sank 
back  unconsciously,  and  she  slept  again,  all  through  the 
night  and  half  the  day  that  followed. 

Through  all  the  hours  she  was  conscious  at  intervals 
of  the  fragrance  of  flowers,  of  the  gleams  of  silver  and 
gold,  of  the  sounds  of  distant  music,  of  the  white,  calm 
gaze  of  marble  fauns  and  dryads,  who  gazed  on  her  from 
amidst  the  coolness  of  hanging  foliage.  She  who  had 
never  rested  on  any  softer  couch  than  her  truss  of  hay  or 
heap  of  bracken,  dreamed  that  she  slept  on  roses.  The 
fragrance  of  innumerable  flowers  breathed  all  around  her. 
A  distant  music  came  through  the  silence  on  her  drowsy 
ear.  For  the  first  time  in  her  life  of  toil  and  pain  she 
knew  how  exquisite  a  pleasure  mere  repose  can  be. 

At  noon  she  awoke,  crying  aloud  that  the  Red  Mouse 
claimed  her  soul  from  Thauatos. 

When  her  vision  cleared,  and  her  dream  passed  away, 
the  music,  the  flowers,  the  color,  the  coolness,  were  all 
real  around  her.  She  was  lying  on  a  couch  as  soft  as  the 
rose-beds  of  Sybaris.  About  her  were  the  luxuries  and 
the  graces  amidst  which  the  rich  dwell.  Above  her  head, 
from  a  golden  height,  a  painted  Eros  smiled. 

The  light,  on  to  which  her  startled  eyes  opened,  came 
to  her  veiled  through  soft,  rosy  hues;  the  blossom  of 
flowers  met  her  everywhere ;  gilded  lattices,  and  precious 
stones,  and  countless  things  for  which  she  knew  neither 
the  name  nor  use,  and  wondrous  plants,  with  birds  like 
living  blossoms  on  the  wing  above  them,  and  the  marble 
heads  of  women,  rising  cold  and  pure  above  the  dreamy 
shadows,  all  the  color,  and  the  charm,  and  the  silence, 
and  the  grace  of  the  life  that  is  rounded  by  wealth  were 
around  her. 

She  lay  silent  and  breathless  awhile,  with  wide-open 
eyes,  motionless  from  the  languor  of  her  weakness  and 
the  confusion  of  her  thoughts,  wondering  dully,  whether 
she  belonged  to  the  hosts  of  the  living  or  the  dead. 

She  was  in  a  small  sleeping-chamber,  in  a  bed  like  the 
cup  of  a  lotos;  there  was  perfect  silence  round  her,  ex- 
cept for  the  faint  far-off  echo  of  some  music ;  a  drowsy 


FOLLE-FARINE.  453 

subtle  fragrance  filled  the  air,  the  solemn  measure  of  a 
clock's  pendulum  deepened  the  sense  of  stillness ;  for  the 
first  time  in  her  life  she  learned  how  voluptuous  a  thing 
the  enjoyment  of  simple  rest  can  be.  All  her  senses 
were  steeped  in  it,  lulled  by  it,  magnetized  by  it;  and, 
so  far  as  every  thought  was  conscious  to  her,  she  thought 
that  this  was  death — death  amidst  the  fields  of  asphodel, 
and  in  the  eternal  peace  of  the  realm  of  Thanatos. 

Suddenly  her  eyes  fell  on  a  familiar  thing,  a  little  pic- 
ture close  at  hand,  the  picture  of  herself  amidst  the 
poppies. 

She  leapt  from  her  bed  and  fell  before  it,  and  clasped 
it  in  her  arms,  and  wept  over  it  and  kissed  it,  because  it 
had  been  the  work  of  his  hand,  and  prayed  to  the  un- 
known gods  to  make  her  suffer  all  things  in  his  stead, 
and  to  give  him  the  desire  of  his  soul.  And  the  Red 
Mouse  had  no  power  on  her,  because  of  her  great  love. 

She  rose  from  that  prayer  with  her  mind  clear,  and 
her  nerves  strung  from  the  lengthened  repose ;  she  re- 
membered all  that  had  chanced  to  her. 

"  Where  are  my  clothes?"  she  muttered  to  the  serving- 
woman  who  watched  beside  her.  "  It  is  broad  day  ; — I 
must  go  on  ; — -to  Paris." 

They  craved  her  to  wear  the  costly  and  broidered 
stuffs  strewn  around  her;  masterpieces  of  many  an  East- 
ern and  Southern  loom  ;  but  she  put  them  all  aside  in 
derision  and  impatience,  drawing  around  her  with  a 
proud  loving  action  the  folds  of  her  own  poor  garments. 
Weather-stained,  torn  by  bush  and  brier,  soaked  with 
night-dew,  and  discolored  by  the  dye  of  many  a  crushed 
flower  and  bruised  berry  of  the  fields  and  woods,  she  yet 
would  not  have  exchanged  these  poor  shreds  of  woven 
flax  and  goats'  wool  against  imperial  robes,  for,  poor 
though  they  were,  they  were  the  symbols  of  her  inde- 
pendence and  her  liberty. 

The  women  tended  her  gently,  and  pressed  on  her 
many  rare  and  fair  things,  but  she  would  not  have  them  ; 
she  took  a  cup  of  milk,  and  passed  out  into  the  larger 
chamber.  * 

She  was  troubled  and  bewildered,  but  she  had  no  fear  ; 
for  she  was  too  innocent,  too  wearied,  and  too  desperate 


454  .      -  FOLLE-FARINE. 

with  that  deathless  courage,  which,  having  borne  the 
worst  that  fate  can  do,  can  know  no  dread. 

She  stood  with  her  arms  folded  on  her  breast,  drawing 
together  the  tattered  folds  of  the  tunic,  gazing  at  the 
riches  and  the  luxury,  and  the  blended  colors  of  the 
room.  So  softly  that  she  never  heard  his  footfall,  the 
old  man  entered  behind  her,  and  came  to  the  hearth,  and 
looked  on  her. 

"  You  are  better  ?"  he  asked.  "  Are  you  better,  Folle- 
Farine  ?" 

She  looked  up,  and  met  the  eyes  of  Sartorial).  They 
smiled  again  on  her  with  the  smile  of  the  Red  Mouse. 

The  one  passion  which  consumed  her  was  stronger 
than  any  fear  or  any  other  memory :  she  only  thought 
this  man  must  know  ? 

She  sprang  forward  and  grasped  his  arm  with  both 
hands,  with  the  seizure  of  a  tigress  ;  her  passionate  eyes 
searched  his  face  ;  her  voice  came  hard  and  fast. 

"What  have  you  done? — is  he  living  or  dead? — you 
must  know?" 

His  eyes  still  smiled  : 

"  I  gave  him  his  golden  key  ; — how  he  should  use  it, 
that  was  not  in  our  bond  ?  But,  truly,  I  will  make 
another  bond  with  you  any  day,  Folle-Farine." 

She  shuddered,  and  her  hands  dropped  from  their  hold. 

"You  know  nothing?"  she  murmured. 

"  Of  your  Norse  god  ?  nay,  nothing.  An  eagle  soars  too 
high  for  a  man's  sight  to  follow,  you  know — oftentimes." 

And  he  laughed  his  little  soft  laugh. 

The  eagles  often  soared  so  high — so  high — that  the 
icy  vapors  of  the  empyrean  froze  them  dead,  and  they 
dropped  to  earth  a  mere  bruised,  helpless,  useless  mass : 
— he  knew. 

She  stood  stunned  and  confused :  her  horror  of  Sarto- 
rian  was  struggling  into  life  through  the  haze  in  which 
all  things  of  the  past  were  still  shrouded  to  her  dulled 
remembrance — all  things,  save  her  love. 

"  Rest  awhile,"  he  said,  gently.  "  Rest;  and  we  may 
— who  knows  ? — learn  something  of  your  Northern  god. 
First,  tell  me  of  yourself.  I  have  sought  for  tidings  of 
you  vainly." 


FOLLE-FARINE.  455 

Her  eyes  glanced  round  her  on  every  side. 

"  Let  me  go,"  she  muttered. 

"  Nay — a  moment  yet.     You  are  not  well." 

"  I  am  well." 

"  Indeed  ?     Then  wait  a  moment." 

She  rested  where  he  motioned  ;  he  looked  at  her  in 
smiling  wonder. 

She  leaned  on  one  of  the  cushioned  couches,  calm, 
motionless,  negligent,  giving  no  sign  that  she  saw  the 
chamber  round  her  to  be  any  other  than  the  wooden  barn 
or  thatched  cattle-sheds  of  the  old  mill-house;  her  feet 
were  crossed,  her  limbs  were  folded  in  that  exquisite 
repose  which  is  inborn  in  races  of  the  East;  the  warmth 
of  the  room  and  the  long  hours  of  sleep  had  brought 
the  natural  bloom  to  her  face,  the  natural  luster  to  her 
eyes,  which  earlier  fatigue  and  long  illness  had  banished. 

He  surveyed  her  with  that  smile  which  she  had  re- 
sented on  the  day  when  she  had  besought  pity  of  him 
for  Arslan's  sake. 

"  Do  you  not  eat  ?"  was  all  he  said. 

"Not  here." 

He  laughed,  his  low  humorous  laugh  that  displeased 
her  so  bitterly,  though  it  was  soft  of  tone. 

"And  all  those  silks,  and  stuffs,  and  laces — do  they 
please  you  no  better?" 

u  They  are  not  mine." 

"  Pooh  !  do  you  not  know  yet  ?  A  female  thing,  as 
beautiful  as  you  are,  makes  hers  everything  she  looks 
upon  ?" 

"  That  is  a  fine  phrase." 

"And  an  empty  one,  you  think.  On  my  soul !  no. 
Everything  you  see  here  is  yours,  if  it  please  you." 

She  looked  at  him  with  dreaming  perplexed  eyes. 

"  What  do  you  want  of  me  ?"  she  said,  suddenly. 

"  Nay — why  ask  ?  All  men  are  glad  to  give  to  women 
with  such  a  face  as  yours." 

She  laughed  a  little ;  with  the  warmth,  the  rest,  the 
wonder,  the  vague  sense  of  some  unknown  danger,  her 
old  skill  and  courage  rose.  She'  knew  that  she  had 
promised  to  be  grateful  always  to  this  man  :  otherwise, 
— oh,  God  ! — how  she  could  have  hated  him,  she  thought! 


456  FOLLE-FARINE. 

u  Why  ?"  she  answered,  "  why  ?  Oh.  only  this :  when 
I  bought  a  measure  of  pears  for  Flamma  in  the  market- 
place, the  seller  of  them  would  sometimes  pick  me  out  a 
big  yellow  bon-chretien,  soft  as  butter,  sweet  as  sugar, 
and  offer  it  to  me  for  myself.  Well,  when  he  did  that, 
I  always  knew  that  the  weight  was  short,  or  the  fruit 
rotten.  This  is  a  wonderful  pear  yon  would  give  me ; 
but  is  your  measure  false?" 

He  looked  at  her  with  a  curious  wonder  and  admira- 
tion :  he  was  angered,  humbled,  incensed,  and  allured, 
and  yet  he  was  glad  ;  she  looked  so  handsome  thns  with 
the  curl  on  her  quiet  lips,  and  her  spirited  bead  fit  for  a 
bronze  cast  of  Atalanta. 

He  was  an  old  man  ;  he  could  bear  to  pause  and  rightly 
appreciate  the  charm  of  scorn,  the  spur  of  irony,  the  good 
of  hatred.  He  knew  the  (nil  value  of  its  sharp  spears 
to  the  wonder-blooming  aloe. 

He  left  the  subject  for  a  happier  moment,  and,  seating 
himself,  opened  his  hands  to  warm  them  by  the  wood  fire, 
still  watching  her  with  that  smile,  which  for  its  very  in- 
dulgence, its  merry  banter,  she  abhorred. 

u  You  lost  your  Norse  god  as  I  prophesied  ?"  he  asked, 
carelessly. 

He  saw  her  whole  face  change  as  with  a  blow,  and 
her  body  bend  within  itself  as  a  young  tree  bends  under 
a  storm. 

"  He  went  when  yon  gave  him  the  gold,"  she  said  be- 
low her  breath. 

"  Of  course  he  went  You  would  have  him  set  free," 
he  said,  with  the  little  low  laugh  still  in  his  throat. 
"Did  I  not  say  you  must  dream  of  nothing  else  if  once 
you  had  him  freed  ?  You  would  be  full  of  faith ;  and 
unbar  your  eagle "s  prison-house,  and  then,  because  he 
took  wing  through  the  open  door,  you  wonder  stilL  That 
is  not  very  wise,  Folle-Farine." 

"I  do  not  wonder,"  she' said,  with  fierce  effort,  stifling 
her  misery.  "  He  had  a  right  to  do  as  be  would :  have 
I  said  any  otherwise  ?" 

M  \  You  are  very  faithful  still,  I  see.  Yet,  I  can- 
not think  that  you  believed  my  prophecy,  or  yon — a 
woman — had  never  been  so  strong.     You  think  I  can 


FOLLE-FARIXE.  457 

tell  you  of  his  fate  ?  Xay,  on  my  soul  I  know  nothing. 
Men  do  not  speak  his  name.  He  may  be  dead ; — you 
shrink  ?  So !  can  it  matter  so  much  ?  He  is  dead  to 
you.  He  is  a  great  man,  but  he  is  a  fool.  Half  his 
genius  would  give  him  the  fame  he  wants  with  much 
greater  swiftness  than  the  whole  ever  will.  The  world 
likes  talent,  which  serves  it.  It  hates  genius,  which 
rules  it  Men  would  adore  his  technical  treatment,  his 
pictorial  magnificence,  his  anatomical  accuracy ;  but  they 
will  always  be  in  awe  of  his  intensity  of  meaning,  of  his 
marvelous  fertility,  of  his  extraordinary  mingling  of  the 
chillest  of  idealisms  and  the  most  unsparing  of  sensuali- 
ties,— but  I  talk  idly.  Let  us  talk  of  you  ;  see,  I  chose 
your  likeness,  and  he  let  me  have  it — did  you  dream  that 
he  would  part  with  it  so  lightly  ?" 

"  Why  not  ?     He  had  a  million  things  more  beautiful." 

He  looked  at  her  keenly.  He  could  measure  the  superb 
force  of  this  unblenching  and  mute  courage. 
0  "In  any  other  creature  such  a  humility  would  be 
hypocrisy.  But  it  is  not  so  in  you.  Why  will  you  carry 
yourself  as  in  an  enemy's  house?  Will  you  not  even 
break  your  fast  with  me  ?  Nay,  that  is  sullen,  that  is 
barbaric.  Is  there  nothing  that  can  please  you  ?  See 
here, — all  women  love  these ;  the  gypsy  as  well  as  the 
empress.     Hold  them  a  moment'7 

She  took  them ;  old  oriental  jewels  lying  loose  in  an 
agate  cup  on  a  table  near ;  there  were  among  them  three 
great  sapphires,  which  in  their  way  were  priceless,  from 
their  rare  size  and  their  perfect  color. 

Her  mouth  laughed  with  its  old  scorn.  She,  who  had 
lost  life,  soul,  earth,  heaven,  to  be  consoled  with  the  glass 
beads  of  a  bauble  I  This  man  seemed  to  her  more  foolish 
than  any  creature  that  had  ever  spoken  on  her  ear. 

She  looked,  then  laid  them — indifferently — down. 

"  Three  sparrow's  eggs  are  as  big,  and  almost  as  blue, 
among  the  moss  in  any  month  of  May  I" 

He  moved  them  away,  chagrined. 

"  How  do  you  intend  to  live  ?  he  asked,  dryly. 

"It  will  come  as  it  comes,"  she  answered,  with  the 
fatalism  and  composure  that  ran  in  her  Eastern  blood. 

39 


458  FOLLE-FARINE. 

"  What  have  you  done  up  to  this  moment  since  you 
left  my  house  at  Rioz  ?" 

She  told  him,  briefly;  she  wanted  to  hide  that  she  had 
suffered  aught,  or  had  been  id  any  measure  coldly  dealt 
with,  and  she  spoke  with  the  old  force  of  a  happier  time, 
seeking  rather  to  show  how  well  it  was  with  her  that  she 
should  thus  be  free,  and  have  no  law  save  her  own  will, 
and  know  that  none  lived  who  could  say  to  her,  "  Come 
hither"  or  "go  there." 

Almost  she  duped  him,  she  was  so  brave.  Not  quite. 
His  eyes  had  read  the  souls  and  senses  of  women  for 
half  a  century ;  and  none  had  ever  deceived  him.  As  he 
listened  to  her  he  knew  well  that  under  her  desolation 
and  her  solitude  her  heart  was  broken — though  not  her 
courage. 

But  he  accepted  her  words  as  she  spoke  them.  "  Per- 
haps you  are  wise  to  take  your  fate  so  lightly,"  he  said 
to  her.  "  But  do  you  know  that  it  is  a  horrible  thing 
to  be  alone  and  penniless  and  adrift,  and  without  a  home 
or  a  friend,  when  one  is  a  woman  and  young  ?" 

11  It  is  worse  when  one  is  a  woman  and  old ;  but  who 
pities  it  then  ?"  she  said,  with  the  curt  and  caustic  mean- 
ing that  had  first  allured  him  in  her. 

"And  a  woman  is  so  soon  old!"  he  added,  with  as 
subtle  a  significance. 

She  shuddered  a  little ;  no  female  creature  that  is 
beautiful  and  vigorous  and  young  can  coldly  brook  to 
look  straight  at  the  doom  of  age ;  death  is  far  less  ap- 
palling, because  death  is  uncertain,  mystical,  and  may 
still  have  beauty. 

"What  do  you  intend  to  do  with  yourself?"  he  pur- 
sued. 

"  Intend !  It  is  for  the  rich  'to  intend,'  the  poor  must 
take  what  chances." 

She  spoke  calmly,  leaning  down  on  one  of  the  cush- 
ioned benches  by  the  hearth,  resting  her  chin  on  her 
hand ;  her  brown  slender  feet  were  crossed  one  over 
another,  her  eyelids  were  heavy  from  weakness  and  the 
warmth  of  the  room ;  the  soft  dim  light  played  on  her 
tenderly ;  he  looked  at  her  with  a  musing  smile. 

"  No  beautiful  woman  need   ever  be  poor,"  he  said, 


FOLLE-FARINE.  459 

slowly  spreading  out  the  delicate  palms  of  his  hands  to 
the  fire;  "and  you  are  beautiful — exceedingly." 

"  I  know  I"  She  gave  a  quick  gesture  of  her  head,  tired, 
insolent,  indifferent;  and' a  terrible  darkness  stole  over 
her  face ;  what  matter  how  beautiful  she  might  be,  she 
had  no  beauty  in  her  own  sight,  for  the  eyes  of  Arslan 
had  dwelt  on  her  cold,  calm,  unmoved,  whilst  he  had 
said,  "  I  would  love  you — if  I  could." 

"  You  know  your  value,"  Sartorian  said,  dryly.  "  Well, 
then,  why  talk  of  poverty  and  of  your  future  together  ? 
they  need  never  be  companions  in  this  world." 

She  rose  and  stood  before  him  in.  the  rosy  glow  of  the 
fire  that  bathed  her  limbs  until  they  glowed  like  jade  and 
porphyry. 

"  No  beautiful  woman  need  be  poor — no — no  beautiful 
woman  need  be  honest,  I  dare  say." 

He  smiled,  holding  his  delicate  palms  to  the  warmth 
of  his  hearth. 

"  Your  lover  drew  a  grand  vision  of  Barabbas.  Well 
— we  choose  Barabbas  still,  just  as  Jerusalem  chose; 
only  now,  our  Barabbas  is  most  often  a  woman.  Why 
do  you  rise  ?  It  is  a  wet  day,  out  there,  and,  for  the 
spring-time,  cold." 

"Is  it?" 

"And  you  have  been  ill  ?" 

"  So  they  say." 

"You  will  die  of  cold  and  exposure." 

"  So  best." 

"  Wait  a  moment.  In  such  weather  I  would  not  let  a 
dog  stir." 

"You  would  if  the  dog  chose  to  go." 

"  To  a  master  who  forsook  it — for  a  kick  and  a  curse  ?" 

Her  face  burned ;  she  hung  her  head  instinctively. 
She  sank  down  again  on  the  seat  which  she  had  quitted. 
The  old  horror  of  shame  which  she  had  felt  by  the  water- 
side under  the  orchards  bent  her  strength  under  this 
man's  unmerciful  pressure.  She  knew  that  he  had  her 
secret,  and  the  haughty  passion  and  courage  of  her  nature 
writhed  under  his  taunt  of  it. 

"  To  refuse  to  stay  is  uncouth,"  he  said  to  her. 

"  I  am  uncouth,  no  doubt." 


460  FOLLE-FARINE. 

"And  it  is  ungrateful." 

"  I  would  not  be  that." 

"  Ungrateful !  I  did  what  you  asked  of  me.  I  un- 
loosed your  Othyr  of  Art  to  spend  his  strength  as  he 
will,  in  essaying  to  raise  a  storm-blast  which  shall  have 
force  enough  to  echo  through  the  endless  tunnels  of  the 
time  to  come." 

"  You  gave  him  a  handful  of  gold  pieces  for  that!" 

"  Ah  1  if  you  thought  that  I  should  offer  him  the  half 
of  my  possessions,  you  were  disappointed,  no  doubt.  But 
you  forgot  that  '  that'  would  not  sell  in  the  world,  as 
yet,  for  a  handful  of  wheat." 

She  touched  the  three  sapphires. 

"  Are  your  blue  stones  of  less  worth,  because  I,  being 
ignorant,  esteem  them  of  no  more  value  than  three  spar- 
row's eggs  in  the  hedge  ?" 

"  My  poor  jewels  1  Well,  stay  here  to-night;  you  need 
rest,  shelter,  and  warmth ;  and  to-morrow  you  shall  go 
as  poor  as  you  came,  if  you  wish.  But  the  world  is 
very  hard.  The  world  is  always  winter — to  the  poor," 
he  added,  carelessly,  resting  his  keen  far-reaching  eyes 
upon  her. 

Despite  herself  she  shuddered ;  he  recalled  to  her  that 
the  world  was  close  at  hand-r-the  world  in  which  she 
would  be  houseless,  friendless,  penniless,  alone. 

"A  hard  world,  to  those  who  will,  not  worship  its 
gods,"  he  repeated,  musingly.  "  And  you  astray  in  it, 
you  poor  barbarian,  with  your  noble  madness,  and  your 
blindness  of  faith  and  of  passion.  Do  you  know  what 
it  is  to  be  famished,  and  have  none  to  hear  your  cries  ?" 

"  Do  I  know  ?"  her  voice  suddenly  gathered  strength 
and  scorn,  and  rang  loud  on  the  stillness.  "  Do  you? 
The  empty  dish,  the  chill  stove,  the  frozen  feet,  the  long 
nights,  with  the  roof  dripping  rain,  the  sour  berries  and 
hard  roots  that  mock  hunger,  the  mud  floors,  with  the 
rats  fighting  to  get  first  at  your  bed,  the  bitter  black 
months,  whose  saints'  days  are  kept  by  new  pains,  and 
whose  holy  days  are  feasted  by  fresh  diseases.  Do  / 
know?     Do  you ?" 

He  did  not  answer  her ;  he  was  absorbed  in  his  study 
of  her  face ;  he  was  thinking  how  she  would  look  in 


FOLLE-FARINE.  461 

Paris  in  some  theatre's  spectacle  of  Egypt,  with  anklets 
of  dull  gold  and  a  cymar  of  dead  white,  and  behind  her 
a  sea  of  palms  and  a  red  and  sullen  sky. 

'•  What  a  fool  he  must  have  been !"  he  thought,  as  his 
eyes  went  from  her  to  the  study  of  her  sleeping  in  the 
poppies.  "  What  a  fool !  he  left  his  lantern  of  Aladdin 
behind  him." 

11  You  remember  unlovely  things,"  he  said,  aloud. 
"  No,  I  do  not  know  them  j  and  I  should  not  have  sup- 
posed that  you,  who  did,  could  so  much  have  cared  to 
know  them  more,  or  could  have  clung  to  them  as  the 
only  good,  as  you  now  seem  to  do.  You  cannot  love 
such  hardships  ?" 

"  I  have  never  known  luxuries  ;  and  I  do  not  wish  to 
know  them." 

"  Then  you  are  no  woman.  What  is  your  idea  of  the 
most  perfect  life  V 

"  I  do  not  know — to  be  always  in  the  open  air,  and  to 
be  quite  free,  and  forever  to  see  the  sun." 

"Not  a  low  ideal.  You  must  await  the  Peruvian 
Paradise.  Meanwhile  there  is  a  dayspring  that  repre- 
sents the  sun  not  ill ;  we  call  it  Wealth." 

11  Ah  1"  she  could  not  deride  this  god,  for  she  knew  it 
was  the  greatest  of  them  all ;  when  the  rod  of  riches 
had  been  lost,  had  not  the  Far-Striking  King  himself 
been  brought  low  and  bound  down  to  a  slave's 
drudgery  ? 

The  small,  keen,  elfin,  satiric  face  bent  on  her  did  not 
change  from  its  musing  study,  its  slow,  vigilant  smile ; 
holding  her  under  the  subtle  influence  of  his  gaze,  Sar- 
torian  began  to  speak, — speak  as  he  could  at  choice,  with 
accents  sweet  as  silver,  slow  words  persuasive  as  sorcery. 
With  the  terse,  dainty,  facile  touches  of  a  master,  he 
placed  before  her  that  world  of  which  she  knew  no  more 
than  any  one  of  the  reeds  that  blew  by  the  sands  of  the 
river. 

He  painted  to  her  that  life  of  all  others  which  was  in 
most  vital  contrast  and  unlikeness  to  her  own  ;  the  life 
of  luxury,  of  indolence,  of  carelessness,  of  sovereignty, 
of  endless  pleasure,  and  supreme  delight ;  he  painted  to 
her  the  years  of  a  woman  rich,  caressed,  omnipotent, 

39* 


4G2  FOLLE-FARINE. 

beautiful,  supreme,  with  all  the  world  before  her  from 
which  to  choose  her  lovers,  her  playthings,  her  triumphs, 
her  victories,  her  cruelties,  and  her  seductions.  He  painted 
the  long  cloudless  invigorating  day  of  such  a  favorite  of 
fortune,  with  its  hours  winged  by  love,  and  its  laughter 
rhymed  to  music,  and  its  wishes  set  to  gold  ;  the  same 
day  for  the  same  woman,  whether  it  were  called  of  Rome 
or  of  Corinth,  of  Byzantium  or  of  Athens,  of  Babylon  or 
of  Paris,  and  whether  she  herself  were  hailed  hetaira  or 
imperatrix.  He  drew  such  things  as  the  skill  of  his 
words  and  the  deep  knowledge  of  his  many  years  enabled 
him,  in  language  which  aroused  her  even  from  the  ab- 
sorption of  her  wretchedness,  and  stirred  her  dull  dis- 
ordered thoughts  to  a  movement  of  restless  discontent, 
and  of  strange  wonder — Arslan  had  never  spoken  to  her 
thus. 

He  let  his  words  dwell  silently  on  her  mind,  awhile: 
then  suddenly  he  asked  her, — 

"  Such  lives  are ;  do  you  not  envy  them  ?" 

She  thought, — "Envy  them?  she?  what  could  she 
envy  save  the  eyes  that  looked  on  Arslan's  face?" 
"What  were  the  use?"  she  said  aloud;  "all  my  life  I 
have  seen  all  things  are  for  others ;  nothing  is  for  me." 

"  Your  life  is  but  just  opening.  Henceforth  you  shall 
see  all  things  for  you,  instead." 

She  flashed  her  eyes  upon  him. 

"  How  can  that  be  ?" 

"Listen  to  me;  you  are  alone  in  the  world,  Folle- 
Farine  ?" 

"Alone;  yes." 

"  You  have  not  a  coin  to  stand  a  day  between  you  and 
hunger  ?" 

"  Not  one." 

"  You  know  of  no  roof  that  will  shelter  you  for  so  much 
as  a  night?" 

"Not  one." 

"You  have  just  left  a  public  place  of  pestilence?" 

"Yes." 

"And  you  know  that  every  one's  hand  is  against  you 
because  you  are  nameless  and  bastard,  and  come  of  a  pro- 
scribed people,  who  are  aliens  alike  in  every  land  ?" 


FOLLE-FARINE.  463 

"I  am  Folle-Farine ;  yes." 

For  a  moment  he  was  silent.  The  simple,  pathetic 
acceptance  of  the  fate  that  made  her  name — merely  be- 
cause hers — a  symbol  of  all  things  despised,  and  desolate, 
and  forsaken,  touched  his  heart  and  moved  him  to  a  sor- 
rowful pity.  But  the  pity  died,  and  the  cruelty  remained 
alive  behind  it. 

He  bent  on  her  the  magnetic  power  of  his  bright,  sar- 
donic, meaning  eyes. 

"Well— be  Folle-Farine  still.  Why  not?  But  let 
Folle-Farine  mean  no  longer  a  beggar,  an  outcast,  a  leper, 
a  thing  attainted,  proscribed,  and  forever  suspected ;  but 
let  it  mean  on  the  ear  of  every  man  that  hears  it  the  name 
of  the  most  famous,  the  most  imperious,  the  most  tri- 
umphant, the  most  beautiful  woman  of  her  time ;  a  woman 
of  whom  the  world  says,  'look  on  her  face  and  die — you 
have  lived  enough.' " 

Her  breath  came  and  went  as  she  listened  ;  the  blood 
in  her  face  flushed  and  paled ;  she  trembled  violently, 
and  her  whole  frame  seemed  to  dilate  and  strengthen 
and  vibrate  with  the  electric  force  of  that  subtlest  tempta- 
tion. 

"  I !"  she  murmured  brokenly. 

"  Yes,  you.  All  that  I  say  you  shall  be :  homeless, 
tribeless,  nameless,  nationless,  though  you  stand  there 
now,  Folle-Farine." 

The  wondrous  promise  swept  her  fancy  for  the  moment 
on  the  strong  current  of  its  imagery,  as  a  river  sweeps  a 
leaf.  This  empire  hers  ? — hers  ? — when  all  mankind  had 
driven  and  derided  her,  and  shunned  her  sight  and  touch, 
and  cursed  and  flouted  her,  and  barely  thought  her  worthy 
to  be  called  "  thou  dogl" 

He  looked  at  her  and  smiled,  and  bent  towards  the 
warmth  of  the  fire. 

"All  that  I  say  you  shall  be  ;  and — the  year  is  all  win- 
ter for  the  poor,  Folle-Farine." 

The  light  on  her  face  faded ;  a  sudden  apprehension 
tightened  at  her  heart ;  on  her  face  gathered  the  old  fierce 
deadly  antagonism  which  constant  insult  and  attack  had 
taught  her  to  assume  on  the  first  instant  of  menace  as 
her  only  buckler. 


464  FOLLE-FARWE. 

She  knew  not  what  evil  threatened  ;  but  vaguely  she 
felt  that  treason  was  close  about  her. 

"  If  you  do  not  mock  me,"  she  said  slowly,  "  if  you  do 
not — how  will  you  make  me  what  you  promise  V* 

"  I  will  show  the  world  to  you,  you  to  the  world  ;  your 
beauty  will  do  the  rest." 

The  darkness  and  the  perplexed  trouble  deepened  on 
her  face ;  she  rose  and  stood  and  looked  at  him,  her  teeth 
shut  together  with  a  quick  sharp  ring,  her  straight  proud 
brows  drew  together  in  stormy  silence ;  all  the  tigress  in 
her  was  awoke  and  rising  ready  to  spring  ;  yet  amid  that 
dusky  passion,  that  withering  scorn  of  doubt,  there  was  an 
innocent  pathetic  wonder,  a  vague  desolation  and  disap- 
pointment, that  were  childlike  and  infinitely  sad. 

"  This  is  a  wondrous  pear  you  offer  me !"  she  said, 
bitterly.  "  And  so  cheap  ? — it  must  be  rotten  some- 
where." 

"It  is  golden.     Who  need  ask  more  ?" 

And  he  laughed  his  little  low  laugh  in  his  throat. 

Then,  and  then  only,  she  understood  him. 

With  a  sudden  unconscious  instinctive  action  her  hand 
sought  her  knife,  but  the  girdle  was  empty ;  she  sprang 
erect,  her  face  on  fire  with  a  superb  fury,  her  eyes  blazing 
like  the  eyes  of  a  wild  beast's  by  night,  a  magnificence 
of  scorn  and  rage  upon  her  quivering  features. 

Her  voice  rang  clear  and  hard  and  cold  as  ring  the 
blows  of  steel. 

"  I  ask  more, — that  I  should  pluck  it  with  clean  hands, 
and  eat  of  it  with  pure  lips.  Strange  quibble  for  a  beg- 
gar,— homeless,  penniless,  tribeless,  nationless  !  So  you 
think,  no  doubt.  But  we  who  are  born  outlawed  are 
born  free, — and  do  not  sell  our  freedom.     Let  me  go." 

He  watched  her  with  a  musing  smile,  a  dreamy  calm 
content ;  all  this  tempest  of  her  scorn,  all  this  bitterness 
of  her  disdain,  all  this  whirlwind  of  her  passion  and  her 
suffering,  seemed  but  to  beguile  him  more  and  make  him 
surer  of  her  beauty,  <*f  her  splendor,  of  her  strength. 

"  She  would  be  a  great  creature  to  show  to  the  world," 
he  thought,  as  he  drooped  his  head  and  watched  her 
through  his  half-closed  eyelids,  as  the  Red  Mouse  watched 
the  sleeper  in  the  poppies.    "  Let  you  go  ?"  he  said,  with 


FOLLE-FARINE.  465 

that  slow,  ironic  smile, — "  let  you  go  ?  Why  should  I  let 
you  go,  Folle-Farine  ?" 

She  stooped  as  a  tigress  stoops  to  rise  the  stronger  for 
her  death  spring,  and  her  voice  was  low,  on  a  level  with 
his  ear. 

u  Why  ?  Why  ?  To  save  your  own  life — if  you  are 
wise." 

He  laughed  in  his  throat  again. 

"Ah,  ah!  It  is  never  wise  to  threaten,  Folle-Farine. 
I  do  not  threaten.  You  are  foolish  ;  you  are  unreason- 
able :  and  that  is  the  privilege  of  a  woman.  I  am  not 
angered  at  it.  On  the  contrary,  it  adds  to  your  charm.  You 
are  a  beautiful,  reckless,  stubborn,  half-mad,  half-savage 
creature.  Passion  and  liberty  become  you, — become  you 
like  your  ignorance  and  your  ferocity.  I  would  not  for 
worlds  that  you  should  change  them." 

"  Let  me  go  !"  she  cried,  across  his  words. 

"  Oh,  fool !  the  winter  will  be  hard, — and  you  are  bare 
of  foot, — and  you  have  not  a  crust!" 

u  Let  me  go."4 

"  Ah  !  Go  ? — to  beg  your  way  to  Paris,  and  to  creep 
through  the  cellars  and  the  hospitals  till  you  can  see  your 
lover's  face,  and  to  crouch  a  moment  at  his  feet  to  hear 
him  mutter  a  curse  ou  you  in  payment  for  your  pilgrim- 
age ;  and  then  to  slit  your  throat  or  his — in  your  despair, 
and  lie  dead  in  all  your  loveliness  in  the  common  ditch." 

M  Let  me  go,  I  say !" 

"  Or  else,  more  like,  come  back  to  me  in  a  week's  time 
and  say,  '  I  was  mad  but  now  I  am  wise.  Give  me  the 
golden  pear.  What  matter  a  little  speck?  What  is 
golden  may  be  rotten ;  but  to  all  lips  it  is  sweet.'  " 

"  Let  me  go  !" 

She  stood  at  bay  before  him,  pale  in  her  scorn  of  rags, 
her  right  hand  clinched  against  her  breast,  her  eyes  breath- 
ing fire,  her  whole  attitude  instinct  with  the  tempest  of 
contempt  and  loathing,  which  she  held  down  thus,  passive 
and  almost  wordless,  because  sh*  once  had  promised 
never  to  be  thankless  to  this  man. 

He  gazed  at  her  and  smiled,  and  thought  how  beautiful 
that  chained  whirlwind  of  her  passions  looked  ;  but  he 
did  not  touch  her  nor  even  go  nearer  to  her.     There  was 


466  FOLLE-FAUINE. 

a  dangerous  gleam  in  her  eyes  that  daunted  him.  More- 
over, he  was  patient,  humorous,  gentle,  cruel,  wise, — all 
in  one ;  and  he  desired  to  tame  and  to  beguile  her,  and  to 
see  her  slowly  drawn  into  the  subtle  sweetness  of  the 
powers  of  gold  ;  and  to  enjoy  the  yielding  of  each  moral 
weakness  one  by  one,  as  the  southern  boy  slowly  pulls 
limb  from  limb,  wing  from  wing,  of  the  cicala. 

"  I  will  let  you  go,  surely,"  he  said,  with  his  low, 
grim  laugh.  "  I  keep  no  woman  prisoner  against  her 
will.  But  think  one  moment  longer,  Folle-Farine.  You 
will  take  no  gift  at  my  hands  V 

11  None." 

V  You  want  to  go, — penniless  as  you  are  ?" 

"I  will  go  so, — no  other  way." 

"  You  will  fall  ill  on  the  road  afresh." 

"  That  does  not  concern  you." 

''You  will  starve." 

"That  is  my  question." 

"  You  will  have  to  herd  with  the  street  dogs." 

"  Their  bite  is  better  than  your  welcome." 

"You  will  be  suspected, — most  likely  imprisoned.  You 
are  an  outcast." 

"  That  may  be." 

"You  will  be  driven  to  public  charity." 

"Not  till  I  need  a  public  grave." 

"You  will  have  never  a  glance  of  pity,  never  a  look 
of  softness,  from  your  northern  god  ;  he  has  no  love  for 
you,  and  he  is  in  his  grave  most  likely.  Icarus  falls — 
always." 

For  the  first  time  she  quailed  as  though  struck  by  a 
sharp  blow ;  but  her  voice  remained  inflexible  and 
serene. 

"  I  can  live  without  love  or  pity,  as  I  can  without 
home  or  gold.     Once  for  all, — let  me  go." 

"I  will  let  you  go,"  he  said,  slowly,  as  he  moved  a 
little  away.  "  I  will  let  you  go  in  seven  days'  time.  For 
seven  days  you  shaft  do  as  you  please ;  eat,  drink,  be 
clothed,  be  housed,  be  feasted,  be  served,  be  beguiled, — 
as  the  rich  arc.  You  shall  taste  all  these  things  that 
gold  gives,  and  which  you,  being  ignorant,  dare  rashly 
deride  and  refuse.     If,  when  seven  days  end,  you  still 


FOLLE-FARINE.  467 

choose,  you  shall  go,  and  as  poor  as  you  came.  But  you 
will  not  choose,  for  you  are  a  woman,  Folle-Farine !" 

Ere  she  knew  his  intent  he  had  moved  the  panel  and 
drawn  it  behind  him,  and  left  her  alone, — shut  in  a  trap 
like  the  birds  that  Claudis  Flamma  had  netted  in  his 
orchards. 

That  night,  when  the  night  without  was  quite  dark, 
she  knelt  down  before  the  study  of  the  poppies,  and  kissed 
it  softly,  and  prayed  to  the  unknown  God,  of  whom  none 
had  taught  her  in  anywise,  yet  whose  light  she  still  had 
found,  and  followed  in  a  dim,  wondering,  imperfect  fash- 
ion, as  a  little  child  lost  in  the  twilight  of  some  pathless 
wood,  pursues  in  trembling  the  gleam  of  some  great,  still 
planet  looming  far  above  her  through  the  leaves. 

When  she  arose  from  her  supplication,  her  choice  was 
already  made. 

And  the  Red  Mouse  had  no  power  on  her,  because  of 
her  great  love. 


CHAPTER  X. 


At  sunrise  a  great  peacock  trailing  his  imperial  purple 
on  the  edge  of  a  smooth  lawn,  pecked  angrily  at  a  torn 
fragment  of  a  scarlet  scarf;  a  scarf  that  had  been  woven 
in  his  own  Eastern  lands,  but  which  incensed  his  sight, 
fluttering  there  so  idly,  as  it  seemed,  on  the  feathery  sprays 
of  a  little  low  almond-tree  that  grew  by  the  water's  edge. 

The  water  was  broad,  and  full  of  lily-leaves  and  of  rare 
reeds  and  rushes;  it  had  been  so  stemmed  and  turned  by 
art  that  it  washed  the  basement  walls  and  mirrored  the 
graceful  galleries  and  arches  of  the  garden  palace,  where 
the  bird  of  Here  dwelt. 

Twenty  feet  above  the  level  of  the  gardens,  where  the 
peacock  swept  in  the  light,  there  was  an  open  casement, 
a  narrow  balcony  of  stone  ;  a  group  of  pale  human  faces 
looking  out  awe-stricken.  A  leap  in  the  night — the  night 
wet  and  moonless, — waters  a  fathom  deep, — a  bed  of  sand 
treacherous  and  shifting  as  the  ways  of  love.    What  could 


468  FOLLE-FARINE. 

all  these  be  save  certain  death  ?  Of  death  they  were  afraid ; 
but  they  were  more  afraid  yet  of  the  vengeance  of  their 
flute-voiced  lord. 

On  the  wall  the  Red  Mouse  sat  among  the  flowers  of 
sleep ;  he  could  have  told ;  he  who  for  once  had  heard 
another  prayer  than  the  blasphemies  of  the  Brocken. 

But  the  Red  Mouse  never  tells  any  secret  to  men ;  he 
has  lived  too  long  in  the  breast  of  the  women  whom  men 
love. 

The  Sun  came  from  the  east,  and  passed  through  the 
pale  stricken  faces  that  watched  from  the  casement,  and 
came  straight  to  where  the  Red  Mouse  sat  amidst  the 
poppies. 

"  Have  you  let  a  female  soul  escape  you  ?"  said  the 
Sun. 

The  Red  Mouse  answered: 

"  Love  is  stronger  than  I.  When  he  keeps  his  hands 
pure,  where  he  guards  the  door  of  the  soul,  I  enter  not. 
I  sit  outside  and  watch,  and  watch,  and  watch.  But  it 
is  time  lost.    Love  is  strong ;  the  door  is  barred  to  me." 

Said  the  Sun: 

"  That  is  strange  to  hear.  My  sister,  the  Moon,  has 
told  me  oftentimes  that  Eros  is  your  pander — always." 

"Anteros  only,"  said  the  Red  Mouse. 

The  Sun,  wondering,  said  again: 

"And  yet  I  have  heard  that  it  is  your  boast  that  into 
every  female  soul  you  enter  at  birth,  and  dwell  there  unto 
death.     Is  it,  then,  not  so  ?" 

The  Red  Mouse  answered: 

"  The  boast  is  not  mine  ;  it  is  man's." 


FOLLE-FARINE.  469 


CHAPTER  XI. 

In  the  dark  of  the  night  she  had  leapt  to  what,  as  she 
thought,  would  prove  her  grave ;  but  the  waters,  with 
human-like  caprice,  had  cast  her  back  upon  the  land  with 
scarce  an  effort  of  her  own.  Given  back  thus  to  life, 
whether  she  would  or  no,  she  by  sheer  instinct  stumbled 
to  her  feet  and  fled  as  fast  as  she  could  in  the  wet,  gloomy 
night  through  the  grassy  stretches  of  the  unknown  gar- 
dens and  lands  in  which  she  found  herself. 

She  was  weighted  with  her  soaked  clothes  as  with 
lead,  but  she  was  made  swift  by  terror  and  hatred,  as 
though  Hermes  for  once  had  had  pity  for  anything  human, 
and  had  fastened  to  her  feet  his  own  winged  sandals. 

She  ran  on  and  on,  not  knowing  whither ;  only  know- 
ing that  she  ran  from  the  man  who  had  tempted  her  by 
the  strength  of  the  rod  of  wealth. 

The  rains  were  ceaseless,  the  skies  had  no  stars,  in  the 
dense  mist  no  lights  far  or  near,  of  the  city  or  planets, 
of  palace  or  house  were  seen.  She  did  not  know  where 
she  went ;  she  only  ran  on  away  and  away,  anywhere, 
from  the  Red  Mouse  and  its  master. 

When  the  daybreak  grew  gray  in  the  heavens,  she 
paused,  and  trembling  crept  into  a  cattle-shed  to  rest  and 
take  breath  a  little.  She  shrank  from  every  habitation, 
she  quivered  at  every  human  voice ;  she  was  afraid — 
horribly  afraid — in  those  clinging  vapors,  those  damp 
deathly  smells,  those  ghostly  shadows  of  the  dawn,  those 
indistinct  and  unfamiliar  creatures  of  a  country  strange 
to  her. 

That  old  man  with  the  elfs  eyes,  who  had  tempted 
her,  was  he  a  god  too,  she  wondered,  since  he  had  the 
rod  that  metes  power  and  wealth  ?  He  might  stretch 
his  hand  anywhere,  she  supposed,  and  take  her. 

The  gentle  cattle  in  their  wooden  home  made  way  for 
40 


470  FOLLE-FARINE. 

her,  and  humbly  welcomed  her.  She  hid  herself  among 
their  beds  of  hay,  and  in  the  warmth  of  their  breath  and 
their  bodies.  She  was  wet  and  wretched,  like  any  half- 
drowned  dog ;  but  the  habits  of  her  hardy  life  made  cold, 
and  hunger,  and  exposure  almost  powerless  to  harm  her. 
She  slept  from  sheer  exhaustion  of  mind  and  body.  The 
cattle  could  have  trodden  her  to  death,  or  tossed  her 
through  the  open  spaces  of  their  byres,  but  they  seemed 
to  know,  they  seemed  to  pity ;  and  they  stirred  so  that 
they  did  not  brush  a  limb  of  her,  nor  shorten  a  moment 
of  her  slumbers. 

When  she  awoke  the  sun  was  high. 

A  herdswoman,  entering  with  the  loud,  harsh  clash  of 
brazen  pails,  kicked  her  in  the  loins,  and  rated  her  furi- 
ously for  daring  to  rest  there.  She  arose  at  the  kick, 
and  went  out  from  the  place  passively,  not  well  knowing 
what  she  did. 

The  morning  was  warm  and  radiant;  the  earth  and 
the  trees  were  dripping  with  the  rains  of  the  night ;  the 
air  was  full  of  sweet  odors,  and  of  a  delicious  coldness. 
As  far  as  she  saw  there  was  no  token  far  or  near  of  the 
gleaming  cloud  of  the  city  of  her  dreams.  She  ventured 
to  ask  at  a  wayside  cabin  if  she  were  near  to  or  far 
from  Paris. 

The  woman  of  the  cottage  looked  up  searchingly  from 
the  seat  before  the  porch,  and  for  answer  cried  to  her : 
"Paris  !  pouf — f — f!  get  out,  you  drowned  rat." 

She  had  lost  for  the  time  the  mental  force,  and  even 
the  physical  force  to  resent  or  to  persevere ;  she  was 
weak  with  hunger  and  bewildered  with  her  misery.  She 
had  only  sense  enough  left  to  remember — and  be  thank- 
ful— that  in  the  night  that  was  past  she  had  been  strong. 

The  sun  beat  on  her  head,  the  road  was  hard,  and 
sharp-set  with  flint;  she  was  full  of  pain,  her  brain 
throbbed  with  fever  and  reeled  with  weakness ;  a  sudden 
horror  seized  her  lest  she  might  die  before  she  had  looked 
again  on  the  face  of  Arslan. 

She  saw  the  dusky  shade  of  a  green  wood  ;  by  sheer 
instinct  she  crept  into  it  as  a  stricken  deer  into  its  sanct- 
uary. 

She  sat  in  the  darkness  of  the  trees  in  the  coolness  of 


FOLLE-FARINE.  4U 

the  wood,  and  rested  her  head  on  her  hands,  and  let  the 
big  salt  tears  drop  one  by  one,  as  the  death  tears  of  the 
llama  fall. 

This  was  the  young  year  round  her ;  that  she  knew. 

The  winter  had  gone  by  ;  its  many  months  had  passed 
over  her  head  whilst  she  was  senseless  to  any  flight  of 
night  or  day ;  death  might  have  taken  the  prey  which  it 
had  once  been  robbed  of  by  her ;  in  all  this  weary  season, 
which  to  her  was  as  a  blank,  his  old  foes  of  failure  and 
famine  might  have  struggled  for  and  vanquished  him, 
she  not  being  by ;  his  body  might  lie  in  any  plague-ditch 
of  the  nameless  poor,  his  hand  might  rot  fleshless  and 
nerveless  in  any  pit  where  the  world  cast  its  useless  and 
dishonored  dead ;  the  mould  of  his  brain  might  make  a 
feast  for  eyeless  worms,  not  more  stone  blind  than  was 
the  human  race  he  had  essayed  to  serve ;  the  beauty  of 
his  face  might  be  a  thing  of  loathsomeness  from  which  a 
toad  would  turn.  Oh,  God  !  would  death  never  take  her 
likewise  ?  Was  she  an  outcast  even  from  that  one  tribe- 
less  and  uncounted  nation  of  the  dead  ? 

That  god  whom  she  had  loved,  whom  she  had  chosen, 
whose  eyes  had  been  so  full  of  pity,  whose  voice  had 
murmured:  "  Nay,  the  wise  know  me  as  man's  only 
friend"  : — even  he,  Thanatos,  had  turned  against  her  and 
abandoned  her. 

Vague  memories  of  things  which  she  had  heard  in 
fable  and  tradition,  of  bodies  accursed  and  condemned  to 
wander  forever  unresting  and  wailing ;  of  spirits,  which 
for  their  curse  were  imprisoned  in  a  living  flesh  that 
they  could  neither  lose  nor  cast  away  so  long  as  the  world 
itself  endured;  creatures  that  the  very  elements  had 
denied,  and  that  were  too  vile  for  fire  to  burn,  or  water 
to  drown,  or  steel  to  slay,  or  old  age  to  whither,  or 
death  to  touch  and  take  in  any  wise.  All  these  memo- 
ries returned  to  her,  and  in  her  loneliness  she  wondered 
if  she  were  such  a  one  as  these. 

She  did  not  know,  indeed,  that  she  had  done  any  great 
sin ;  she  had  done  none  willingly,  and  yet  all  people 
called  her  vile,  and  they  must  know. 

Even  the  old  man,  mocking  her,  had  said  : 

"Never  wrestle  with  Fate.     He  throws  the  strongest, 


472  FOLLE-FARINE. 

soon  or  late.  And  your  fate  is  shame ;  it  was  your  birth- 
gift,  it  will  be  your  burial-cloth.  Can  you  cast  it  off? 
No.  But  you  can  make  it  potent  as  gold,  and  sweet  as 
honey  if  you  choose,  Folle-Farine." 

And  she  had  not  chosen  ;  yet  of  any  nobility  in  the  re- 
sistance she  did  not  dream.  She  had  shut  her  heart  to 
it  by  the  unconscious  instinct  of  strength,  as  she  had  shut 
her  lips  under  torture,  and  shut  her  hands  against  life. 

She  sat  there  in  the  wood,  roofless,  penniless,  friend- 
less, and  every  human  creature  was  against  her.  Her 
tempter  had  spoken  only  the  bare  and  bleak  truth.  A 
dog  stoned  and  chased  and  mad  could  be  the  only  living 
thing  on  the  face  of  the  earth  more  wretched  and  more 
desolate  than  herself. 

The  sun  of  noon  was  bright  above-head  in  a  cloudless 
sky,  but  in  the  little  wood  it  was  cool  and  shady,  and 
had  the  moisture  of  a  heavy  morning  dew.  Millions  of 
young  leaves  had  uncurled  themselves  in  the  warmth. 
Little  butterflies,  some  azure,  some  yellow,  some  white, 
danced  in  the  light.  Brown  rills  of  water  murmured 
under  the  grasses,  the  thrushes  sang  to  one  another 
through  the  boughs,  and  the  lizard  darted  hither  and 
thither,  green  as  the  arrowy  leaves  that  made  its  shelter. 

A  little  distance  from  her  there  was  a  group  of  joyous 
singers  who  looked  at  her  from  time  to  time,  their 
laughter  hushing  a  little,  and  their  simple  carousal  under 
the  green  boughs  broken  by  a  nameless  chillness  and  in- 
voluntary speculation.  She  did  not  note  them,  her  face 
being  bowed  down  upon  her  hands,  and  no  sound  of  the 
thrushes'  song  or  of  the  human  singers'  voices  rousing 
her  from  the  stupefaction  of  despair  which  drugged  her 
senses. 

They  watched  her  long ;  her  attitude  did  not  change. 

One  of  them  at  length  rose  up  and  went,  hesitating,  a 
step  or  two  forwards;  a  girl  with  winking  feet,  clad 
gayly  in  bright  colors,  though  the  texture  of  her  clothes 
was  poor. 

She  went  and  touched  the  crouched,  sad  figure  softly. 

"  Are  you  in  trouble  ?" 

The  figure  lifted  its  bowed  head,  its  dark,  hopeless  eyes. 

Folle-Farine  looked  up  with  a  stare  and  a  shiver. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  413 

"  It  is  no  matter,  I  am  only — tired." 

"  Are  you  all  alone  ?" 

"  Yes." 

"  Come  and  sit  with  us  a  moment.  You  are  in  the 
damp  and  the  gloom ;  we  are  so  pleasant  and  sunny 
there.     Come." 

"  You  are  good,  but  let  me  be." 

The  blue-eyed  girl  called  to  the  others.  They  lazily 
rose  and  came. 

"  Heaven !  she  is  handsome  I"  the  men  muttered  to 
one  another. 

She  looked  straight  at  them  all,  and  let  them  be. 

"You  are  all  alone  ?"  they  asked  her  again. 

"  Always,"  she  answered  them. 

"  You  are  going — where  ?" 

"  To  Paris  " 

"What  to  do  there?" 

"  I  do  not  know." 

"  You  look  wet — suffering — what  is  the  matter  ?" 

11 1  was  nearly  drowned  last  night — an  accident — it  is 
nothing." 

"  Where  have  you  slept  ?" 

"  In  a  shed :  with  some  cattle." 

"  Could  you  get  no  shelter  in  a  house  ?" 

"I  did  not  seek  any." 

"  What  do  you  do  ?     What  is  your  work  ?" 

"  Anything — nothing." 

"  What  is  your  name  ?" 

"Folle-Farine." 

"That  means  the  chaff; — less  than  the  chaff, — the 
dust." 

"It  means  me." 

They  were  silent,  only  bending  on  her  their  bright 
curious  eyes. 

They  saw  that  she  was  unspeakably  wretched ;  that 
some  great  woe  or  shock  had  recently  fallen  on  her,  and 
given  her  glance  that  startled  horror  and  blanched  her 
rich  skin  to  an  ashen  pallor,  and  frozen,  as  it  were,  the 
very  current  of  the  young  blood  in  her  veins. 

They  were  silent  a  little  space.  Then  whispered 
together. 

40* 


474  FOLLE-FARINE. 

"  Come  with  us,"  they  urged.  "  We,  too,  go  to  Paris. 
We  are  poor.     We  follow  art.     We  will  befriend  you." 

She  was  deaf  to  them  long,  being  timid  and  wild  of 
every  human  thing.  But  they  were  urgent;  they  were 
eloquent ;  these  young  girls  with  their  bright  eyes ; 
these  men  who  spoke  of  art ;  these  wanderers  who  went 
to  the  great  city. 

In  the  end  they  pressed  on  her  their  companionship. 
They,  too,  were  going  to  Paris  ;  they  spoke  of  perils  she 
would  run,  of  vouchers  she  would  need :  she  wondered 
at  their  charity,  but  in  the  end  walked  on  with  them — 
fearing  the  Red  Mouse. 

They  were  mirthful,  gentle  people,  so  she  thought: 
they  said  they  followed  art;  they  told  her  she  could 
never  enter  Paris  nameless  and  alone :  so  she  went.  The 
chief  of  the  little  troop  watched  wonderingly  her  step, 
her  posture,  her  barbaric  and  lustrous  beauty,  brilliant 
still  even  through  the  pallor  of  grief  and  the  weariness 
of  fatigue;  of  these  he  had  never  seen  the  like  before, 
and  he  knew  their  almost  priceless  value  in  the  world, 
and  of  the  working  classes  and  street  mobs  of  Paris. 

"  Listen,"  he  said  suddenly  to  her.  "  We  shall  play 
to-night  at  the  next  town.     Will  you  take  a  part?" 

Walking  along  through  the  glades  of  the  wood,  lost 
in  thought,  she  started  at  his  voice. 

"  I  do  not  know  what  you  mean  ?" 

"  I  mean — will  you  show  yourself  with  us  ?  We  will 
give  you  no  words.  It  will  be  quite  easy.  What  money 
we  make  we  divide  among  us.  All  you  shall  do  shall 
be  to  stand  and  be  looked  at — you  are  beautiful,  and  you 
know  it,  no  doubt?" 

She  made  a  weary  sign  of  assent.  Beautiful  ?  What 
could  it  matter  if  she  were  so,  or  if  she  were  not,  what 
the  mere  thought  of  it  ?  The  beauty  that  she  owned, 
though  so  late  a  precious  possession,  a  crown  of  glory 
to  her,  had  lost  all  its  fairness  and  all  its  wonder  since  it 
had  been  strengthless  to  bind  to  hers  the  only  heart  in 
which  she  cared  to  rouse  a  throb  of  passion,  since  it  had 
been  unworthy  to  draw  upon  it  with  any  lingering  gaze 
of  love  the  eyes  of  Arslan. 

He  looked  at  her  more  closely  j  this  was  a  strange 


FOLLE-FARINE.  475 

creature,  he  thought,  who,  being  a  woman  and  in  her 
first  youth,  could  thus  acknowledge  her  own  loveliness 
with  so  much  candor,  yet  so  much  indifference. 

That  afternoon  they  halted  at  a  little  town  that  stood 
in  a  dell  across  the  fields,  a  small  place  lying  close  about 
a  great  church  tower. 

It  was  almost  dusk  when  they  entered  it ;  but  it  was 
all  alive  with  lights  and  shows,  and  trumpets  and  ban- 
ners ;  it  was  the  day  of  a  great  fair,  and  the  merry-go- 
rounds  were  whirling,  and  the  trades  in  gilded  cakes  and 
puppets  of  sugar  were  thriving  fast,  and  the  narrow 
streets  were  full  of  a  happy  and  noisy  peasant  crowd. 

As  soon  as  the  little  troop  entered  the  first  street  a  glad 
cry  rose. 

They  were  well  known  and  well  liked  there ;  the  people 
clustered  by  dozens  round  them,  the  women  greeting  them 
with  kisses,  the  children  hugging  the  dogs,  the  men 
clamoring  with  invitations  to  eat  and  to  drink  and  be 
merry. 

They  bade  her  watch  them  at  their  art  in  a  rough 
wooden  house  outside  the  wine  tavern. 

She  stood  in  the  shadow  and  looked  as  they  bade  her, 
while  the  mimic  life  of  their  little  stage  began  and  lived 
its  hour. 

To  the  mind  which  had  received  its  first  instincts  of 
art  from  the  cold,  lofty,  passionless  creations  of  Arslan, 
from  the  classic  purity  and  from  the  divine  conception  of 
the  old  Hellenic  ideal,  the  art  of  the  stage  could  seem  but 
poor  and  idle  mimicry ;  gaudy  and  fragrantless  as  any 
painted  rose  of  paper  blooming  on  a  tinseled  stem. 

The  crystal  truthfulness,  the  barbaric  liberty,  the  pure 
idealism  of  her  mind  and  temper  revolted  in  contempt 
from  the  visible  presentment  and  the  vari-colored  harle- 
quinade of  the  actor's  art.  To  her,  a  note  of  song,  a 
gleam  of  light,  a  shadowy  shape,  a  veiled  word,  were 
enough  to  unfold  to  her  passionate  fancy  a  world  of  dreams, 
a  paradise  of  faith  and  of  desire  ;  and  for  this  very  cause 
she  shrank  away,  in  amazement  and  disgust,  from  this 
realistic  mockery  of  mere  humanity,  which  left  nothing 
for  the  imagination  to  create,  which  spoke  no  other  tongue 
than  the  common  language  of  human  hopes  and  fears.     It 


476  FOLLE-FARINE. 

could  not  touch  her,  it  could  not  move  her  ;  it  filled  her — 
so  far  as  she  could  bring  herself  to  think  of  it  at  all — 
with  a  cold  and  wondering  contempt. 

For  to  the  reed  which  has  once  trembled  under  the 
melody  born  of  the  breath  divine,  the  voices  of  mortal 
mouths,  as  they  scream  in  rage,  or  exult  in  clamor,  or 
contend  in  battle,  must  ever  seem  the  idlest  and  the 
emptiest  of  all  the  sounds  under  heaven. 

"  That  is  your  art  ?"  she  said  wearily  to  the  actors  when 
they  came  to  her. 

"  Well,  is  it  not  art ;  and  a  noble  one  ?" 

A  scornful  shadow  swept  across  her  face. 

"  It  is  no  art.  It  is  human  always.  It  is  never  divine. 
There  is  neither  heaven  nor  hell  in  it.     It  is  all  earth." 

They  were  sharply  stung. 

"  What  has  given  you  such  thoughts  as  that  ?"  they 
said,  in  their  impatience  and  mortification. 

"  I  have  seen  great  things,"  she  said  simply,  and  turned 
away  and  went  out  into  the  darkness,  and  wept, — alone. 

She  who  had  knelt  at  the  feet  of  Thanatos,  and  who 
had  heard  the  songs  of  Pan  amidst  the  rushes  by  the 
river,  and  had  listened  to  the  charmed  steps  of  Persephone 
amidst  the  flowers  of  the  summer; — could  she  honor 
lesser  gods  than  these  ? 

"  They  may  forget — they  may  forsake,  and  he  likewise, 
but  I  never,"  she  thought. 

If  only  she  might  live  a  little  longer  space  to  serve  and 
suffer  for  them  and  for  him  still ;  of  fate  she  asked  nothing 
higher. 

That  night  there  was  much  money  in  the  bag.  The 
players  pressed  a  share  upon  her ;  but  she  refused. 

"  Have  I  begged  from  you  IV  she  said.  "  I  have  earned 
nothing." 

It  was  with  exceeding  difficulty  that  they  ended  in  per- 
suading her  even  to  share  their  simple  supper. 

She  took  only  bread  and  water,  and  sat  and  watched 
them  curiously. 

The  players  were  in  high  spirits;  their  chief  ordered  a 
stoup  of  bright  wine,  and  made  merry  over  it  with  gayer 
songs  and  louder  laughter,  and  more  frequent  jests  than 
even  were  his  wont. 


FOLLE-FARWE.  4?T 

The  men  and  women  of  the  town  came  in  and  out  with 
merry  interchange  of  words.  The  youths  of  the  little 
bourg  chattered  light  amorous  nonsense  ;  the  young  girls 
smiled  and  chattered  in  answer;  whilst  the  actors  ban- 
tered them  and  made  them  a  hundred  love  prophecies. 

Now  and  then  a  dog  trotted  in  to  salute  the  players' 
poodles ;  now  and  then  the  quaint  face  of  a  pig  looked 
between  the  legs  of  its  master. 

The  door  stood  open  ;  the  balmy  air  blew  in ;  beyond, 
the  stars  shone  in  a  cloudless  sky. 

She  sat  without  in  the  darkness,  where  no  light  fell 
among  the  thick  shroud  of  one  of  the  blossoming  boughs 
of  pear-trees,  and  now  and  then  she  looked  and  watched 
their  laughter  and  companionship,  and  their  gay  and 
airy  buffoonery,  together  there  within  the  winehouse 
doors. 

"All  fools  enjoy!"  she  thought;  with  that  bitter  won- 
der, that  aching  disdain,  that  involuntary  injustice,  with 
which  the  strong  sad  patience  of  a  great  nature  surveys 
the  mindless  merriment  of  lighter  hearts  and  brains  more 
easily  lulled  into  forgetful ness  and  content. 

They  came  to  her  and  pressed  on  her  a  draught  of  the 
wine,  a  share  of  the  food,  a  handful  of  the  honeyed  cates 
of  their  simple  banquet;  even  a  portion  of  their  silver 
and  copper  pieces  with  which  the  little  leathern  sack  of 
their  receipts  was  full, — for  once, — to  the  mouth. 

She  refused  all:  the  money  she  threw  passionately 
away. 

"  Am  I  a  beggar  ?"  she  said,  in  her  wrath. 

She  remained  without  in  the  gloom  among  the  cool 
blossoming  branches  that  swayed  above-head  in  the  still 
night,  while  the  carousal  broke  up  and  the  peasants  went 
on  their  way  to  their  homes,  singing  along  the  dark 
streets,  and  the  lights  were  put  out  in  the  winehouse, 
and  the  trill  of  the  grasshopper  chirped  in  the  fields 
around. 

"  You  will  die  of  damp,  roofless  in  the  open  air  this 
moonless  night,"  men,  as  they  passed  away,  said  to  her 
in  wonder. 

"  The  leaves  are  roof  enough  for  me,"  she  answered 
them :  and  stayed  there  with  her  head  resting  on  the  roll 


478  FOLLE-FARINE. 

of  her  sheepskin ;  wide  awake  through  the  calm  dark  hours ; 
for  a  bed  within  she  knew  that  she  could  not  pay,  and 
she  would  not  let  any  charity  purchase  one  for  her. 

At  daybreak  when  the  others  rose  she  would  only  take 
from  them  the  crust  that  was  absolutely  needful  to  keep 
life  in  her.  Food  seemed  to  choke  her  as  it  passed  her 
lips, — since  how  could  she  tell  but  what  his  lips  were 
parched  dry  with  hunger  or  were  blue  and  cold  in  death  ? 

That  morning,  as  they  started,  one  of  the  two  youths 
who  bore  their  traveling  gear  and  the  rude  appliances  of 
their  little  stage  upon  his  shoulders  from  village  to  village 
when  they  journeyed  thus — being  oftentimes  too  poor  to 
permit  themselves  any  other  mode  of  transit  and  of  por- 
terage— fell  lame  and  grew  faint  and  was  forced  to  lay 
down  his  burden  by  the  roadside. 

She  raised  the  weight  upon  her  back  and  head  as  she 
had  been  wont  to  do  the  weights  of  timber  and  of  corn 
for  the  mill-house,  and  bore  it  onward. 

In  vain  they  remonstrated  with  her;  she  would  not 
yield,  but  carried  the  wooden  framework  and  the  folded 
canvases  all  through  the  heat  and  weariness  of  the  noon- 
day. 

"  You  would  have  me  eat  of  your  supper  last  night. 
I  will  have  you  accept  of  my  payment  to-day,"  she  said, 
stubbornly. 

For  this  seemed  to  her  a  labor  innocent  and  just,  and 
even  full  of  honor,  whatever  men  might  say :  had  not 
Helios  himself  been  bound  as  a  slave  in  Thessaly  ? 

They  journeyed  far  that  day,  along  straight  sunlit 
highways,  and  under  the  shadows  of  green  trees.  The 
fields  were  green  with  the  young  corn  and  th*e  young 
vines ;  the  delicate  plumes  of  the  first  blossoming  lilacs 
nodded  in  their  footsteps ;  the  skies  were  blue  ;  the  earth 
was  fragrant. 

At  noonday  the  players  halted  and  threw  themselves 
down  beneath  a  poplar-tree,  in  a  wild  rose  thicket,  to  eat 
their  noonday  meal  of  bread  and  a  green  cress  salad. 

The  shelter  they  had  chosen  was  full  of  fragrance  from 
rain-drops  still  wet  upon  the  grasses,  and  the  budding 
rose  vines.  The  hedge  was  full  of  honeysuckle  and 
tufts  of  cowslips;  the  sun  was  warmer;  the  mild-eyed 


FOLLE-FARINE.  479 

cattle  came  and  looked  at  them  ;  little  redstarts  picked 
up  their  crumbs;  from  a  white  vine-hung  cottage  an  old 
woman  brought  them  salt  and  wished  them  a  fair  travel. 

But  her  heart  was  sick  and  her  feet  weary,  and  she 
asked  always, — "  Where  is  Paris  ?" 

At  last  they  showed  it  her,  that  gleaming  golden  cloud 
upon  the  purple  haze  of  the  horizon. 

She  crossed  her  hands  upon  her  beating  breast,  and 
thanked  the  gods  that  they  had  thus  given  her  to  behold 
the  city  of  his  desires. 

The  chief  of  the  mimes  watched  her  keenly. 

"  You  look  at  Paris,"  he  said  after  a  time.  "  There 
you  may  be  great  if  you  will." 

"Great?     I?" 

She  echoed  the  word  with  weary  incredulity.  She 
knew  he  could  but  mock  at  her. 

"Ay,"  he  made  answer  seriously.  "  Even  you  !  Why 
not  ?  There  is  no  dynasty  that  endures  in  that  golden 
city  save  only  one — the  sovereignty  of  a  woman's 
beauty." 

She  started  and  shuddered  a  little ;  she  thought  that 
she  saw  the  Red  Mouse  stir  amidst  the  grasses. 

"I  want  no  greatness,"  she  said,  slowly.  "What 
should  I  do  with  it?" 

For  in  her  heart  she  thought, — 

"  What  would  it  serve  me  to  be  known  to  all  the  world 
and  remembered  by  all  the  ages  of  men  if  he  forget — 
forget  quite  ?" 


CHAPTER  XII. 


That  night  they  halted  in  a  little  bright  village  of  the 
leafy  and  fruitful  zone  of  the  city — one  of  the  fragrant 
and  joyous  pleasure-places  among  the  woods  where  the 
students  and  the  young  girls  came  for  draughts  of  milk 
and  plunder  of  primroses,  and  dances  by  the  light  of  the 
spring  moon,  and  love-words  murmured  as  they  fastened 
violets  in  each  other's  breasts. 


480  FOLLE-FARINE. 

The  next  day  she  entered  Paris  with  them  as  one  of 
their  own  people. 

"  You  may  be  great  here,  if  you  choose,"  they^said  to 
her,  and  laughed. 

She  scarcely  heard.  She  only  knew  that  here  it  was 
that  Arslan  had  declared  that  fame — or  death — should 
come  to  him. 

The  golden  cloud  dissolved  as  she  drew  near  to  it. 

A  great  city  might  be  beautiful  to  others  :  to  her  it  was 
only  as  its  gilded  cage  is  to  a  mountain  bird.  The  wil- 
derness of  roofs,  the  labyrinth  of  streets,  the  endless 
walls  of  stone,  the  ceaseless  noises  of  the  living  multi- 
tude, these  were  horrible  to  the  free-born  blood  of  her ; 
she  felt  blinded,  caged,  pent,  deafened.  Its  magnificence 
failed  to  daunt,  its  color  to  charm,  its  pageantry  to  be- 
guile her.  Through  the  glad  and  gorgeous  ways  she 
went,  wearily  and  sick  of  heart,  for  the  rush  of  free  winds 
and  the  width  of  free  skies,  as  a  desert-born  captive,  with 
limbs  of  bronze  and  the  eyes  of  the  lion,  went  fettered 
past  the  palaces  of  Rome  in  the  triumphal  train  of  Afri- 
canus  or  Pompeius. 

The  little  band  with  which  she  traveled  wondered  what 
her  eyes  so  incessantly  looked  for,  in  that  perpetual  intent- 
ness  with  which  they  searched  every  knot  of  faces  that 
was  gathered  together  as  a  swarm  of  bees  clusters  in  the 
sunshine.  They  could  not  tell ;  they  only  saw  that  her 
eyes  never  lost  that  look. 

"  Is  it  the  Past  or  the  Future  that  you  search  for  al- 
ways?" the  shrewdest  of  them  asked  her. 

She  shuddered  a  little,  and  made  him  no  answer. 
How  could  she  tell  which  it  was  ? — whether  it  would  be 
a  public  fame  or  a  nameless  grave  that  she  would  light 
on  at  the  last  ? 

She  was  a  mystery  to  them. 

She  minded  poverty  so  little.  She  was  as  content  on 
a  draught  of  water  and  a  bunch  of  cress  as  others  are  on 
rarest  meats  and  wines.  She  bore  bodily  fatigue  with 
an  Arab's  endurance  and  indifference.  She  seemed  to 
care  little  whether  suns  beat  on  her,  or  storms  drenched 
her  to  the  bone  ;  whether  she  slept  under  a  roof  or  the 
boughs  of  a  tree;  whether  the  people  hissed  her  for  a 


FOLLE-FARINE.  481 

foreign  thing  of  foul  omen,  or   clamored  aloud  in  the 
streets  praise  of  her  perfect  face.     She  cared  nothing. 

She  was  silent  always,  and  she  never  smiled. 

"  I  must  keep  my  liberty 1"  she  had  said  ;  and  she 
kept  it. 

By  night  she  toiled  ceaselessly  for  her  new  masters ; 
docile,  patient,  enduring,  laborious,  bearing  the  yoke  of 
this  labor  as  she  had  borne  that  of  her  former  slavery, 
rather  than  owe  a  crust  to  alms,  a  coin  to  the  gaze  of  a 
crowd.  But  by  day  she  searched  the  city  ceaselessly 
and  alone,  wandering,  wandering,  wandering,  always  on 
a  quest  that  was  never  ended.  For  amidst  the  millions  of 
faces  that  met  her  gaze,  Arslan's  was  not ;  and  she  was 
too  solitary,  too  ignorant,  and  locked  her  secret  too  tena- 
ciously in  her  heart,  to  be  able  to  learn  tidings  of  his 
name. 

So  the  months  of  the  spring  and  the  summer  time 
went  by  ;  it  was  very  strange  and  wondrous  to  her. 

The  human  world  seemed  suddenly  all  about  her ;  the 
quiet  earth,  on  which  the  cattle  grazed,  and  the  women 
threshed  and  plowed,  and  the  sheep  browsed  the  thyme, 
and  the  mists  swept  from  stream  to  sea,  this  was  all 
gone ;  and  in  its  stead  there  was  a  world  of  tumult, 
color,  noise,  change,  riot,  roofs  piled  on  roofs,  clouds  of 
dust  yellow  in  the  sun,  walls  peopled  with  countless 
heads  of  flowers  and  of  women;  throngs,  various  of  hue 
as  garden-beds  of  blown  anemones ;  endless  harmonies 
and  discords  always  rung  together  from  silver  bells,  and 
brazen  trumpets,  and  the  clash  of  arms,  and  the  spray  of 
waters,  and  the  screams  of  anguish,  and  the  laughs  of 
mirth,  and  the  shrill  pipes  of  an  endless  revelry,  and  the 
hollow  sighs  of  a  woe  that  had  no  rest. 

For  the  world  of  a  great  city,  of  "  the  world  as  it  is 
man's,"  was  all  about  her;  and  she  loathed  it,  and  sick- 
ened in  it,  and  hid  her  face  from  it  whenever  she  could, 
and  dreamed,  as  poets  dream  in  fever  of  pathless  seas  and 
tawny  fields  of  weeds,  and  dim  woods  filled  with  the  song 
of  birds,  and  cool  skies  brooding  over  a  purple  moor,  and 
all  the  silence  and  the  loveliness  and  the  freedom  of  "  the 
world  as  it  is  God's." 

"  You  are  not  happy  ?"  one  man  said  to  her. 
41 


482  FOLLE-FARINE. 

"Happy!" 

She  said  no  more ;  but  he  thought,  just  so  had  he  seen 
a  rose-crested  golden-eyed  bird  of  the  great  savannas 
look,  shut  in  a  cage  in  a  showman's  caravan,  and  dying 
slowly,  with  dulled  plumage  and  drooped  head,  while 
the  street  mob  of  a  town  thrust  their  lingers  through 
the  bars  and  mocked  it,  and  called  to  it  to  chatter  and  be 

"  Show  your  beauty  once — just  once  amidst  us  on  the 
stage,  and  on  the  morrow  you  can  choose  your  riches  and 
your  jewels  from  the  four  winds  of  heaven  as  you  will," 
the  players  urged  on  her  a  hundred  times. 

But  she  refused  always. 

Her  beauty — it  was  given  to  the  gods,  to  take  or  leave, 
in  life  or  death,  for  him. 

The  months  went  on ;  she  searched  for  him  always. 
A  horrible,  unending  vigil  that  never  seemed  nearer  its 
end.  Yainly,  day  by  day,  she  searched  the  crowds  and 
the  solitudes,  the  gates  of  the  palaces  and  the  vaults  of 
the  cellars.  She  thought  she  saw  him  a  thousand  times  ; 
but  she  could  never  tell  whether  it  were  truth  or  fancy. 
She  never  met  him  face  to  face :  she  never  heard  his 
name.  There  is  no  desert  wider,  no  maze  more  unend- 
ing, than  a  great  city. 

She  ran  hideous  peril  with  every  moment  that  she 
lived ;  but  by  the  strength  and  the  love  that  dwelt  to- 
gether in  her  she  escaped  them.  Her  sad,  wide,  open, 
pathetic  eyes  searched  only  for  his  face  and  saw  no  other  ; 
her  ear,  ever  strained  to  listen  for  one  voice,  was  dead  to 
every  accent  of  persuasion  or  of  passion. 

When  men  tried  to  tell  her  she  was  beautiful,  she  looked 
them  full  in  the  eyes  and  laughed,  a  terrible  dreary  laugh 
of  scorn  that  chilled  them  to  the  bone.  When  the  gay 
groups  on  balconies,  that  glanced  golden  in  the  sun,  flung 
sweetmeats  at  her,  and  dashed  wine  on  the  ground,  and 
called  to  her  for  her  beauty's  sake  to  join  them,  she 
looked  at  them  with  a  look  that  had  neither  envy  nor 
repugnance  in  it,  but  only  a  cold  mute  weariness  of  con- 
tempt. 

One  day  a  great  sculptor  waylaid  her,  and  showed  her 
a  pouch  full  of  money  and  precious  stones.     "All  that, 


FOLLE-FARINE.  483 

and  more,  you  shall  have,  if  you  will  let  me  make  a  cast 
of  your  face  and  your  body  once."  Id  answer,  she  showed 
him  the  edge  of  her  hidden  knife. 

One  day  a  young  man,  unlike  to  all  the  ragged  and 
toil-worn  crowds  that  alone  beheld  her,  came  in  those 
crowded  quarters  of  the  poor,  and  watched  her  with  eyes 
aglow  like  those  of  the  youth  in  the  old  market-square 
about  the  cathedral,  and  waylaid  her,  later,  in  solitude, 
and  slid  in  her  palm  a  chain  studded  with  precious  stones 
of  many  colors. 

"lam  rich,"  he  murmured  to  her.  "  I  am  a  prince. 
I  can  make  your  name  a  name  of  power,  if  only  you  will 
come." 

u  Come  whither  ?"  she  asked  him. 

"  Come  with  me — only  to  my  supper-table — for  one 
hour;  my  horses  wait." 

She  threw  the  chain  of  stones  at  her  feet. 

"  I  have  no  hunger,"  she  said,  carelessly.  "  Go,  ask 
those  that  have  to  your  feast." 

And  she  gave  no  other  phrase  in  answer  to  all  the 
many  honeyed  and  persuasive  words  with  which  in  vain 
he  urged  her,  that  night  and  many  another  night,  until  he 
wearied. 

One  day,  in  the  green  outskirts  of  the  city,  passing  by 
under  a  gilded  gallery,  and  a  wide  window,  full  of  flowers, 
and  hung  with  delicate  draperies,  there  looked  out  the 
fair  head  of  a  woman,  with  diamonds  in  the  ears,  and  a 
shroud  of  lace  about  it,  while  against  the  smiling  scorn- 
ful mouth  a  jeweled  hand  held  a  rose ;  and  a  woman's 
voice  called  to  her,  mockingly: 

"  Has  the  devil  not  heard  you  yet,  that  you  still  walk 
barefoot  in  the  dust  on  the  stones,  and  let  the  sun 
beat  on  your  head  ?  O  fool !  there  is  gold  in  the  air, 
and  gold  in  the  dust,  and  gold  in  the  very  gutter  here,  for 
a  woman  !" 

And  the  face  was  the  face,  and  the  voice  the  voice,  of 
the  gardener's  wife  of  the  old  town  by  the  sea. 

She  raised,  to  the  gilded  balcony  above,  her  great  sor- 
rowful, musing  eyes,  full  of  startled  courage :  soon  she 
comprehended ;  and  then  her  gaze  gave  back  scorn  for 
scorn. 


484  FOLLE-FARINE. 

"  Does  that  brazen  scroll  shade  you  better  than  did  the 
trellised  vine?"  she  said,  with  her  voice  ascending  clear 
in  its  disdain.  "  And  are  those  stones  in  your  breast  any 
brighter  than  the  blue  was  in  the  eyes  of  your  child  ?" 

The  woman  above  cast  the  rose  at  her  and  laughed, 
and  withdrew  from  the  casement. 

She  set  her  heel  on  the  rose,  and  trod  its  leaves  down 
in  the  dust.  It  was  a  yellow  rose,  scentless  and  loveless 
— an  emblem  of  pleasure  and  wealth.  She  left  it  where 
it  lay,  and  went  onward. 

The  sweet  sins,  and  all  their  rich  profits,  that  she 
might  take  as  easily  as  she  could  have  taken  the  rose 
from  the  dust,  had  no  power  to  allure  her. 

The  gilded  balcony,  the  velvet  couch,  the  jewels  in  the 
ears,  the  purple  draperies,  the  ease  and  the  affluence  and 
the  joys  of  the  sights  and  the  senses,  these  to  her  were  as 
powerless  to  move  her  envy,  these  to  her  seemed  as  idle 
as  the  blow-balls  that  a  child's  breath  floated  down  the 
current  of  a  summer  breeze. 

When  once  a  human  ear  has  heard  the  whispers  of  the 
gods  by  night  steal  through  the  reeds  by  the  river,  never 
again  to  it  can  there  sound  anything  but  discord  and 
empty  sound  in  the  tinkling  cymbals  of  brass,  and  the 
fools'  bells  of  silver,  in  which  the  crowds  in  their  deafness 
imagine  the  songs  of  the  heroes  and  the  music  of  the 
spheres. 

11  There  are  only  two  trades  in  a  city,"  said  the  actors 
to  her,  with  a  smile  as  bitter  as  her  own,  "only  two 
trades — to  buy  souls  and  to  sell  them.  What  business 
have  you  here,  who  do  neither  the  one  nor  the  other?" 

There  was  music  still  in  this  trampled  reed  of  the  river, 
into  which  the  gods  had  once  bidden  the  stray  winds  and 
the  wandering  waters  breathe  their  melody ;  but  there, 
in  the  press,  the  buyers  and  sellers  only  saw  in  it  a  frail 
thing  of  the  sand  and  the  stream,  only  made  to  be  woven 
for  barter,  or  bind  together  the  sheaves  of  the  roses  of 
pleasure.  \ 

By-and-by  they  grew  so  impatient  of  this  soul  which 
knew  its  right  errand  so  little  that  it  would  neither  ac- 
cept temptation  itself  nor  deal  it  to  others,  they  grew  so 
impatient  to  receive  that  golden  guerdon  from  passion 


FOLLE-FARWE.  485 

and  evil  which  they  had  foreseen  as  their  sure  wage  for 
her  when  they  had  drawn  her  with  them  to  the  meshes 
of  the  city,  that  they  betrayed  her,  stung  and  driven  into 
treachery  by  the  intolerable  reproach  of  her  continual 
strength,  her  continual  silence. 

They  took  a  heavy  price,  and  betrayed  her  to  the  man 
who  had  set  his  soul  upon  her  beauty,  to  make  it  live 
naked  and  vile  and  perfect  for  all  time  in  marble.  She 
saved  herself  by  such  madness  of  rage,  such  fury  of  re- 
sistance, as  the  native  tigress  knows  in  the  glare  of 
the  torches  or  the  bonds  of  the  cords.  She  smote  the 
sculptor  with  her  knife ;  a  tumult  rose  round ;  voices 
shouted  that  he  was  stabbed ;  the  men  who  had  betrayed 
her  raised  loudest  the  outcry.  In  the  darkness  of  a  nar- 
row street,  and  of  a  night  of  tempest,  she  fled  from  them, 
and  buried  herself  in  the  dense  obscurity  which  is  one  of 
the  few  privileges  of  the  outcasts. 

It  was  very  poor,  this  quarter  where  she  found  refuge  ; 
men  and  women  at  the  lowest  ebb  of  life  gathered  there 
together.  There  was  not  much  crime  ;  it  was  too  poor 
even  for  that.  It  was  all  of  that  piteous,  hopeless  class  that 
is  honest,  and  suffers  and  keeps  silent — so  silent  that  no 
one  notices  when  death  replaces  life. 

Here  she  got  leave  to  dwell  a  little  while  in  the  top- 
most corner  of  a  high  tower,  which  rose  so  high,  so 
high,  that  the  roof  of  it  seemed  almost  like  the  very 
country  itself.  It  was  so  still  there,  and  so  fresh,  and 
the  clouds  seemed  so  near,  and  the  pigeons  flew  so  close 
about  it  all  day  long,  and  at  night  so  trustfully  sought 
their  roost  there. 

In  a  nook  of  it  she  made  her  home.  It  was  very  old, 
very  desolate,  very  barren ;  yet  she  could  bear  it  better 
than  she  could  any  lower  range  of  dwelling.  She  could 
see  the  sunrise  and  the  sunset ;  she  could  see  the  rain- 
mists  and  the  planets ;  she  could  look  down  on  all  the 
white  curl  of  the  smoke  ;  and  she  could  hear  the  bells 
ring  with  a  strange,  peculiar  sweetness,  striking  straight 
to  her  ear  across  the  wilderness  of  roofs.  And  then  she 
had  the  pigeons.  They  were  not  much,  but  they  were 
something  of  the  old,  fresh  country  life;  and  now  and 

41* 


486  FOLLE-FARINE. 

then  they  brought  a  head  of  clover,  or  a  spray  of  grass, 
in  their  beaks  ;  and  at  sight  of  it  the  tears  would  rush 
into  her  eyes,  and  though  it  was  pain,  it  was  yet  a 
dearer  one  than  any  pleasure  that  she  had. 

She  maintained  herself  still  without  alms,  buying  her 
right  to  live  there,  and  the  little  food  that  sufficed  for 
her,  by  one  of  those  offices  in  which  the  very  poor  con- 
trive to  employ  those  still  poorer  than  themselves. 

They  slept  so  heavily,  those  people  who  had  the 
weight  of  twenty  hours'  toil,  the  pangs  of  hunger,  and 
the  chills  of  cold  upon  them,  whenever  they  laid  them 
down,  and  who  would  so  willingly  have  slept  forever 
with  any  night  they  laid  their  heads  upon  their  sacks  of 
rags.  But,  so  long  as  they  woke  at  all,  they  needed  to 
wake  with  the  first  note  of  the  sparrows  in  the  dark. 

She,  so  long  used  to  rise  ere  ever  the  first  streak  of 
day  were  seen,  roused  scores  of  them ;  and  in  payment 
they  gave  her  the  right  to  warm  herself  at  their  stove, 
a  handful  of  their  chestnuts,  a  fragment  of  their  crust,  a 
little  copper  piece, — anything  that  they  could  afford  or 
she  would  consent  to  take.  A  woman,  who  had  been 
the  reveilleuse  of  the  quarter  many  years,  had  died ;  and 
they  were  glad  of  her: — "  Her  eyes  have  no  sleep  in 
them,"  they  said ;  and  they  found  that  she  never  failed. 

It  was  a  strange  trade — to  rise  whilst  yet  for  the 
world  it  was  night,  and  go  to  and  fro  the  dreary  courts, 
up  and  down  the  gloom  of  the  staircases,  and  in  and  out 
the  silent  chambers,  and  call  all  those  sons  and  daughters 
of  wretchedness  from  the  only  peace  that  their  lives 
knew.  So  often  she  felt  so  loath  to  wake  them ;  so 
often  she  stood  beside  the  bundle  of  straw  on  which 
some  dreaming  creature,  sighing  and  smiling  in  her 
sleep,  murmured  of  her  home,  and  had  not  the  heart 
rudely  to  shatter  those  mercies  of  the  night. 

It  was  a  strange,  sad  office,  to  go  alone  among  all 
those  sleepers  in  the  stillness  that  came  before  tbe  dawn, 
and  move  from  house  to  house,  from  door  to  door,  from 
bed  to  bed,  with  the  one  little  star  of  her  lamp  alone 
burning. 

They  were  all  so  poor,  so  poor,  it  seemed  more  cruel 
than  murder  only  to  call  them  from  their  rest  to  work, 


FOLLE-FARINE.  48T 

and  keep  alive  in  them  that  faculty  of  suffering  which 
was  all  they  gained  from  their  humanity. 

Her  pity  for  them  grew  so  great  that  her  heart  per- 
force softened  to  them  also.  Those  strong  men  gaunt 
with  famine,  those  white  women  with  their  starved  chil- 
dren on  their  breasts,  those  young  maidens  worn  blind 
over  the  needle  or  the  potter's  clay,  those  little  children 
who  staggered  up  in  the  dark  to  go  to  the  furnace,  or 
the  wheel,  or  the  powder-mill,  or  the  potato-fields  outside 
the  walls, — she  could  neither  fear  them  nor  hate  them, 
nor  do  aught  save  sorrow  for  them  with  a  dumb,  passion- 
ate, wondering  grief. 

She  saw  these  people  despised  for  no  shame,  wretched 
for  no  sin,  suffering  eternally,  though  guilty  of  no  other 
fault  than  that  of  being  in  too  large  numbers  on  an 
earth  too  small  for  the  enormous  burden  of  its  endless 
woe.  She  found  that  she  had  companions  in  her  misery, 
and  that  she  was  not  alone  under  that  bitter  scorn  which 
had  been  poured  on  her.  In  a  manner  she  grew  to  care 
for  these  human  creatures,  all  strangers,  yet  whose  soli- 
tude she  entered,  and  whose  rest  she  roused.  It  was  a 
human  interest,*  a  human  sympathy.  It  drew  her  from 
the  despair  that  had  closed  around  her. 

.And  some  of  these  in  turn  loved  her. 

Neither  poverty  nor  wretchedness  could  dull  the  lus- 
trous, deep-hued,  flowerlike  beauty  that  was  hers  by 
nature.  As  she  ascended  the  dark  stone  stairs  with  the 
little  candle  raised  above  her  head,  and,  knocking  low, 
entered  the  place  where  they  slept,  the  men  and  the  chil- 
dren alike  dreamed  of  strange  shapes  of  paradise  and 
things  of  sorcery. 

"  When  she  wakes  us,  the  children  never  cry,"  said  a 
woman  whom  she  always  summoned  an  hour  before 
dawn  to  rise  and  walk  two  leagues  to  a  distant  factory. 
It  was  new  to  her  to  be  welcomed  ;*  it  was  new  to  see 
the  children  smile  because  she  touched  them.  It  lifted  a 
little  the  ice  that  had  closed  about  her  heart. 

It  had  become  the  height  of  the  summer.  The  burn- 
ing days  and  the  sultry  nights  poured  down  on  her  bare 
head  and  blinded  her,  and  filled  her  throat  with  the  dust 
of  the  public  ways,  and  parched  her  mouth  with  the 
thirst  of  overdriven  cattle. 


488  FOLLE-FARINE. 

All  the  while  in  the  hard  hot  glare  she  searched  for 
one  face.  All  the  while  in  the  hard  brazen  din  she  lis- 
tened for  one  voice. 

She  wandered  all  the  day,  half  the  night.  They  won- 
dered that  she  woke  so  surely  with  every  dawn ;  they 
did  not  know  that  seldom  did  she  ever  sleep.  She  sought 
for  him  always  ; — sought  the  busy  crowds  of  the  living; 
sought  the  burial-grounds  of  the  dead. 

As  she  passed  through  the  endless  ways  in  the  won- 
drous city ;  as  she  passed  by  the  vast  temples  of  art ;  as 
she  passed  by  the  open  doors  of  the  sacred  places  which 
the  country  had  raised  to  the  great  memories  that  it 
treasured ;  it  became  clearer  to  her — this  thing  of  his 
desires,  this  deathless  name  amidst  a  nation,  this  throne 
on  the  awed  homage  of  a  world  for  which  his  life 
had  labored,  and  striven,  and  sickened,  and  endlessly 
yearned. 

The  great  purpose,  the  great  end,  to  which  he  had  lived 
grew  tangible  and  present  to  her ;  and  in  her  heart,  as 
she  went,  she  said  ever,  "  Let  me  only  die  as  the  reed 
died, — what  matter, — so  that  only  the  world  speak  his 
name  I" 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

One  night  she  stood  on  the  height  of  the  leads  of  the 
tower.  The  pigeons  had  gone  to  roost;  the  bells  had 
swung  themselves  into  stillness ;  far  below  the  changing 
crowds  were  moving  ceaselessly,  but  to  that  calm  altitude 
no  sound  arose  from  them.  The  stars  were  out,  and  a 
great  silver  moon  bathed  half  the  skies  in  its  white  glory. 
In  the  stones  of  the  parapet  wind-sown  blossoms  blew  to 
and  fro  heavy  with  dew. 

The  day  had  been  one  of  oppressive  heat.  She  had 
toiled  all  through  it,  seeking,  seeking,  seeking,  what  she 
never  found.  She  was  covered  with  dust ;  parched  with 
thirst ;  foot-weary ;  sick  at  heart.     She  looked  down  on 


FOLLE-FARTNE.  489 

the  mighty  maze  of  the  city,  and  thought,  "  How  long, — 
how  long  ?" 

Suddenly  a  cool  hand  touched  her,  a  soft  voice  mur- 
mured at  her  ear, — 

"  You  are  not  tired,  Folle-Farine  ?" 

Turning  in  the  gloom  she  faced  Sartorian.  A  great 
terror  held  her  mute  and  breathless  there ;  gazing  in  the 
paralysis  of  horror  at  this  frail  life,  which  was  for  her 
the  incarnation  of  the  world,  and  by  whose  lips  the  world 
said  to  her,  "  Come,  eat  and  drink,  and  sew  your  gar- 
ments with  gems,  and  kiss  men  on  the  mouth  whilst  you 
slay  them,  and  plunder  and  poison,  and  laugh  and  be 
wise.  For  all  your  gods  are  dead ;  and  there  is  but  one 
god  now, — that  god  is  gold." 

"  You  must  be  tired,  surely,"  the  old  man  said,  with 
soft  insistance.  "You  never  find  what  you  seek;  you  are 
always  alone,  always  hungered  and  poor;  always 
wretched,  Folle-Farine.  Ah!  you  would  not  eat  my 
golden  pear.     It  was  not  wise." 

He  said  so  little ;  and  yet,  those  slow,  subtle,  brief 
phrases  pierced  her  heart  with  the  full  force  of  their  odious 
meaning.  She  leaned  against  the  wall,  breathing  hard 
and  fast,  mute,  for  the  moment  paralyzed. 

11  You  fled  away  from  me  that  night.  It  was  heroic, 
foolish,  mad.  Yet  I  bear  no  anger  against  it.  You  have 
not  loved  the  old,  dead  gods  for  naught.  You  have  the 
temper  of  their  times.  You  obey  them ;  though  they 
betray  you  and  forget  you,  Folle-Farine." 

She  gazed  at  him,  fascinated  by  her  very  loathing  of 
him,  as  the  bird  by  the  snake. 

"  Who  told  you  ?"  she  muttered.  "  Who  told  you  that 
I  dwell  here  ?" 

"  The  sun  has  a  million  rays ;  so  has  gold  a  million 
eyes  ;  do  you  not  know  ?  There  is  nothing  you  have  not 
done  that  has  not  been  told  to  me.  But  I  can  always 
wait,  Folle-Farine.  You  are  very  strong;  you  are  very 
weak,  of  course  ; — you  have  a  faith,  and  you  follow  it; 
and  it  leads  you  on  and  on,  on  and  on,  and  one  day  it  will 
disappear, — and  you  will  plunge  after  it, — and  it  will 
drown  you.  You  seek  for  this  man  and  you  cannot  find 
even  his  grave.     You  are  like  a  woman  who  seeks  for 


490  FOLLE-FARINE. 

her  lover  on  a  battle-field.  But  the  world  is  a  carnage 
where  the  vultures  soon  pick  bare  the  bones  of  the  slain, 
and  all  skeletons  look  alike,  and  are  alike,  unlovely,  Folle- 
Farine." 

"  You  came — to  say  this  ?"  she  said,  through  her 
locked  teeth. 

"  Nay — I  came  to  see  your  beauty  :  your  ice-god  tired 

soon ;  but  I My  golden  pear   would   have   been 

better  vengeance  for  a  slighted  passion  than  his  beggar's 
quarter,  and  these  wretched  rags n 

She  held  her  misery  and  her  shame  and  her  hatred 
alike  down  under  enforced  composure. 

"  There  is  no  shame  here,"  she  said,  between  her  teeth. 
"A  beggar's  quarter,  perhaps  ;  but  these  poor  copper  coins 
and  these  rags  I  earn  with  clean  hands." 

He  smiled  with  that  benignant  pity,  with  that  malign 
mockery,  which  stung  her  so  ruthlessly. 

"  No  shame  ?  Oh,  Folle-Farine,  did  I  not  tell  you, 
that,  live  as  you  may,  shame  will  be  always  your  gar- 
ment in  life  and  in  death  ?  You — a  thing  beautiful, 
nameless,  homeless,  accursed,  who  dares  to  dream  to  be 
innocent  likewise !  The  world  will  clothe  you  with 
shame,  whether  you  choose  it  or  not.  But  the  world,  as 
I  say,  will  give  you  one  choice.  Take  its  red  robe  boldly 
from  it,  and  weight  it  with  gold  and  incrust  it  with 
jewels.  Believe  me,  the  women  who  wear  the  white 
garments  of  virtue  will  envy  you  the  red  robe  bitterly 
then." 

Her  arms  were  crossed  upon  her  breast ;  her  eyes 
gazed  at  him  with  the  look  he  had  seen  in  the  gloom  of 
the  evening,  under  the  orchards  by  the  side  of  the  rushing 
mill-water. 

"  You  came — to  say  this  ?" 

"  Nay  :  I  came  to  see  your  beauty,  Folle-Farine.  Your 

northern  god  soon  tired,  I  say ;  but  I Look  yonder 

a  moment,"  he  pursued ;  and  he  motioned  downward  to 
where  the  long  lines  of  light  gleamed  in  the  wondrous 
city  which  was  stretched  at  their  feet ;  and  the  endless 
murmur  of  its  eternal  sea  of  pleasure  floated  dimly  to 
them  on  the  soft  night  air.  "  See  here,  Folle-Farine  : 
you  dwell  with  the  lowest ;  you  are  the  slave  of  street 


FOLLE-FARINE.  491 

mimes;  no  eyes  see  you  except  those  of  the  harlot,  the 
beggar,  the  thief,  the  outcast ;  your  wage  is  a  crust  and 
a  copper  coin  ;  you  have  the  fate  of  your  namesake,  the 
dust,  to  wander  a  little  while,  and  then  sink  on  the  stones 
of  the  streets.  Yet  that  you  think  worthy  and  faithful, 
because  it  is  pure  of  alms  and  of  vice.  Oh,  beautiful 
fool !  what  would  your  lost  lover  say  if  beholding  you 
here  amidst  the  reek  of  the  mob  and  the  homage  of 
thieves  ?  He  would  say  of  you  the  most  bitter  thing 
that  a  man  can  say  of  a  woman :  ■  She  has  sunk  into 
sin,  but  she  has  been  powerless  to  gild  her  sin,  or  make 
it  of  more  profit  than  was  her  innocence.'  And  a  man 
has  no  scorn  like  the  scorn  which  he  feels  for  a  woman 
who  sells  her  soul — at  a  loss.  You  see  ? — ah,  surely, 
you  see,  Folle-Farine  ?" 

She  shook  like  a  leaf  where  she  stood,  with  the  yellow 
and  lustrous  moonlight  about  her.  .  She  saw — she  saw 
now! 

And  she  had  been  mad  enough  to  dream  that  if  she 
lived  in  honesty,  and,  by  labor  that  she  loathed  won 
back,  with  hands  clean  of  crime  as  of  alms,  the  gold 
which  he  had  left  in  her  trust  as  the  wage  of  her  beauty, 
and  found  him  and  gave  it  to  him  without  a  word,  he 
would  at  least  believe — believe  so  much  as  this,  that  her 
hunger  had  been  famine,  and  her  need  misery,  and  her 
homelessness  that  of  the  stray  dog  which  is  kicked  from 
even  a  ditch,  and  hunted  from  even  a  graveyard :  but 
that  through  it  all  she  had  never  touched  one  coin  of 
that  cruel  and  merciless  gift. 

"You  see  t"  pursued  the  low,  flutelike  moaning  mock- 
ery of  her  tormentor's  voice.  "  You  see  ?  You  have  all 
the  shame  :  it  is  your  birthright ;  and  you  have  nothing 
of  the  sweetness  which  may  go  with  shame  for  a  woman 
who  has  beauty.  Now,  look  yonder.  There  lies  the  world, 
which  when  I  saw  you  last  was  to  you  only  an  empty 
name.  Now  you  know  it — know  it,  at  least,  enough  to 
be  aware  of  all  you  have  not,  all  you  might  have  in  it,  if 
you  took  my  golden  pear.  You  must  be  tired,  Folle- 
Farine, — to  stand  homeless  under  the  gilded  balconies  ; 
to  be  footsore  in  the  summer  dust  among  the  rolling  car- 
riages ;  to  stand  outcast  and  famished  before  the  palace 


492  FOLLE-FARINE. 

gates  ;  to  see  the  smiles  upon  a  million  mouths,  and  on 
them  all  not  one  smile  upon  you  ;  to  show  yourself  hourly 
among  a  mob,  that  you  may  buy  a  little  bread  to  eat,  a 
little  straw  to  rest  on  1    You  must  be  tired,  Folle-Farine  !" 

She  was  silent  where  she  stood  in  the  moonlight,  with 
the  clouds  seeming  to  lean  and  touch  her,  and  far  beneath 
the  blaze  of  the  myriad  of  lights  shining  through  the  soft 
darkness  of  the  summer  night. 

Tired ! — ah,  God  ! — tired,  indeed.  But  not  for  any 
cause  of  which  he  spake. 

"  You  must  be  tired.  Now,  eat  of  my  golden  pear ; 
and  there,  where  the  world  lies  yonder  at  our  feet,  no 
name  shall  be  on  the  mouths  of  men  as  your  name  shall 
be  in  a  day.  Through  the  crowds  you  shall  be  borne  by 
horses  fleet  as  the  winds ;  or  you  shall  lean  above  them 
from  a  gilded  gallery,  and  mock  them  at  your  fancy  there 
on  high  in  a  cloud  of  flowers.  Great  jewels  shall  beam 
on  you  like  planets;  and  the  only  chains  that  you  shall 
wear  shall  be  links  of  gold,  like  the  chains  of  a  priestess 
of  old.  Your  mere  wish  shall  be  as  a  sorcerer's  wand, 
to  bring  you  the  thing  of  your  idlest  desire.  You  have 
been  despised ! — what  vengeance  sweeter  than  to  see 
men  grovel  to  win  your  glance,  as  the  swine  at  the  feet 
of  Circe  ?  You  have  been  scorned  and  accursed  ! — what 
retribution  fuller  than  for  women  to  behold  in  you  the 
sweetness  and  magnificence  of  shame,  and  through  you, 
envy,  and  fall,  and  worship  the  Evil  which  begot  you? 
Has  humanity  been  so  fair  a  friend  to  you  that  you  can 
hesitate  to  strike  at  its  heart  with  such  a  vengeance — so 
symmetrical  in  justice,  so  cynical  in  irony  ?  Humanity 
cast  you  out  to  wither  at  your  birth, — a  thing  rootless, 
nameless,  only  meet  for  the  snake  and  the  worm.  If  you 
bear  poison  in  your  fruit,  is  that  your  fault,  or  the  fault 
of  the  human  hands  that  cast  the  chance-sown  weed  out 
on  the  dunghill  to  perish  ?  I  do  not  speak  of  passion.  I 
use  no  anomalous  phrase.  I  am  old  and  ill-favored  ;  and 
I  know  that,  any  way,  you  will  forever  hate  me.  But 
the  rage  of  the  desert-beast  is  more  beautiful  than  the 
meek  submission  of  the  animal  timid  and  tame.  It  is  the 
lioness  in  you  that  I  care  to  chain ;  but  your  chain  shall 
be  of  gold,  Folle-Farine ;  and  all  women  will  envy.    Name 


FOLLE-FARINE.  493 

your  price,  set  it  high  as  you  will ;  there  is  nothing  that 
I  will  refuse.  Nay,  even  I  will  find  your  lover,  who  loves 
not  you ;  and  I  will  let  you  have  your  fullest  vengeance 
on  him.  A  noble  vengeance,  for  no  other  would  be 
worthy  of  your  strength.  Living  or  dead,  his  genius  shall 
be  made  known  to  men  ;  and,  before  another  summer 
comes,  all  the  world  shall  toss  aloft  in  triumph  the  name 
that  is  now  nothing  as  the  dust  is ; — nothing  as  you  are, 
Folle-Farine  1" 

She  heard  in  silence  to  the  end. 

On  the  height  of  the  roof-tops  all  was  still ;  the  stars 
seemed  to  beam  close  against  her  sight ;  below  was  the 
infinite  space  of  the  darkness,  in  which  lines  of  light  glit- 
tered where  the  haunts  of  pleasure  lay ;  all  creatures  near 
her  slept ;  the  wind-sown  plants  blew  to  and  fro,  rooted 
in  tfhe  spaces  of  the  stones. 

As  the  last  words  died  softly  on  the  quiet  of  the  air,  in 
answer  she  reached  her  hand  upward,  and  broke  off  a  tuft 
of  the  yellow  wall-blossom,  and  cast  it  out  with  one  turn 
of  her  wrist  down  into  the  void  of  the  darkness. 

11  What  do  I  say  ?"  she  said,  slowly.  "  What  ?  Well, 
this :  I  could  seize  you,  and  cast  you  down  into  the  dark 
below  there,  as  easily  as  I  cast  that  tuft  of  weed.  And 
why  I  hold  my  hand  I  cannot  tell ;  it  would  be  just." 

And  she  turned  away  and  walked  from  him  in  the 
gloom,  slowly,  as  though  the  deed  she  spake  of  tempted 
her. 


CHAPTER    XIV. 


The  poverties  of  the  city  devoured  her  incessantly,  like 
wolves  ;  the  temptations  of  the  city  crouched  in  wait  for 
her  incessantly,  like  tigers.  She  was  always  hungry, 
always  heartsick,  always  alone;  and  there  was  always  at 
her  ear  some  tempting  voice,  telling  her  that  she  was 
beautiful  and  was  a  fool.  Yet  she  never  dreamed  once 
of  listening,  of  yielding,  of  taking  any  pity  on  herself. 
Was  this  virtue  ?     She  never  thought  of  it  as  such ;  it 

42 


494  FOLLE-FARINE. 

was  simply  instinct;  the  instinct  of  a  supreme  fidelity, 
in  which  all  slighter  and  meaner  passions  were  absorbed 
and  slain. 

Once  or  twice,  through  some  lighted  casement  in  some 
lamp-lit  wood,  where  the  little  gay  boats  flashed  on  fairy 
lakes,  she  would  coldly  watch  that  luxury,  that  indolence, 
that  rest  of  the  senses,  with  a  curl  on  her  lips,  where  she 
sat  or  stood,  in  the  shadow  of  the  trees. 

11  To  wear  soft  stuffs  and  rich  colors,  to  have  jewels  in 
their  breasts,  to  sleep  in  satin,  to  hear  fools  laugh,  to  have 
both  hands  full  of  gold,  that  is  what  women  love,"  she 
thought ;  and  laughed  a  little  in  her  cold  wonder,  and 
went  back  to  her  high  cage  in  the  tower,  and  called  the 
pigeons  in  from  the  rooftops  at  sunset,  and  kissed  their 
purple  throats,  and  broke  among  them  her  one  dry  crust, 
and,  supperless  herself,  sat  on  the  parapet  and  watched 
the  round  white  moon  rise  over  the  shining  roofs  of  Paris. 

She  was  ignorant,  she  was  friendless,  she  was  savage, 
she  was  very  wretched ;  but  she  had  a  supreme  love  in 
her,  and  she  was  strong. 

A  hundred  times  the  Red  Mouse  tried  to  steal  through 
the  lips  which  hunger,  his  Servile  and  unfailing  minister, 
would  surely,  the  Red  Mouse  thought,  disbar  and  unclose 
to  him  sooner  or  later. 

"  You  will  tire,  and  I  can  wait,  Folle-Farine,"  the  Red 
Mouse  had  said  to  her,  by  the  tongue  of  the  old  man 
Sartorian ;  and  he  kept  his  word  very  patiently. 

He  was  patient,  he  was  wise ;  he  believed  in  the  power 
of  gold,  and  he  had  no  faith  in  the  strength  of  a  woman. 
He  knew  how  to  wait — unseen,  so  that  this  rare  bird 
should  not  perceive  the  net  spread  for  it  in  its  wildness 
and  weariness.  He  did  not  pursue,  nor  too  quickly  in- 
cense, her. 

Only  in  the  dark,  cheerless  mists,  when  she  rose  to  go 
among  the  world  of  the  sleeping  poor,  at  her  threshold 
she  would  step  on  some  gift  worthy  of  a  queen's  accept- 
ance, without  date  or  word,  gleaming  there  against  the 
stone  of  the  stairs. 

When  she  climbed  to  her  hole  in  the  roof  at  the  close  of 
a  day,  all  pain,  all  fatigue,  all  vain  endeavor,  all  bootless 
labor  to  and  fro  the  labyrinth  of  streets,  there  would  be 


FOLLE-FARINE.  495 

on  her  bare  bench  such  fruits  and  flowers  as  Dorothea 
might  have  sent  from  Paradise,  and  curled  amidst  them 
some  thin  leaf  that  would  have  bought  the  weight  of  the 
pines  and  of  the  grapes  in  gold. 

When  in  the  dusk  of  the  night  she  went,  wearily  and 
footsore,  through  the  byways  and  over  the  sharp-set 
flints  of  the  quarters  of  the  outcasts  and  the  beggars,  sick 
with  the  tumult  and  the  stench  and  the  squalor,  parched 
with  dust,  worn  with  hunger,  blind  with  the  endless  search 
for  one  face  amidst  the  millions,  —  going  home!  —  oh, 
mockery  of  the  word! — to  a  bed  of  straw,  to  a  cage 
in  the  roof,  to  a  handful  of  rice  as  a  meal,  to  a  night  of 
loneliness  and  cold  and  misery ;  at  such  a  moment  now 
and  then  through  the  gloom  a  voice  would  steal  to  her, 
saying,— 

"  Are  you  not  tired  yet,  Folle-Farine  ?" 

But  she  never  paused  to  hear  the  voice,  nor  gave  it 
any  answer. 

The  mill  dust ;  the  reed  by  the  river ;  the  nameless, 
friendless,  rootless  thing  that  her  fate  made  her,  should 
have  been  weak,  and  so  lightly  blown  by  every  chance 
breeze — so  the  Red  Mouse  told  her ;  should  have  asked 
no  better  ending  than  to  be  wafted  up  a  little  while  upon 
the  winds  of  praise,  or  woven  with  a  golden  braid  into  a 
crown  of  pleasure. 

Yet  she  was  so  stubborn  and  would  not ;  yet  she  dared 
deride  her  tempters,  and  defy  her  destiny,  and  be  strong. 

For  Love  was  with  her. 

And  though  the  Red  Mouse  lies  often  in  Love's  breast, 
and  is  cradled  there  a  welcome  guest,  yet  when  Love, 
once  in  a  million  times,  shakes  off  his  sloth,  and  flings 
the  Red  Mouse  with  it  from  him,  he  flings  with  a  hand 
of  force ;  and  the  beast  crouches  and  flees,  and  dares 
meddle  with  Love  no  more. 

In  one  of  the  first  weeks  of  the  wilder  weather,  weather 
that  had  the  purple  glow  of  the  autumnal  storms  and  the 
chills  of  coming  winter  on  it,  she  arose,  as  her  habit  was, 
ere  the  night  was  altogether  spent,  and  lit  her  little  taper, 
and  went  out  upon  her  rounds  to  rouse  the  sleepers. 

She  had  barely  tasted  food  for  many  hours.  All  the 
means  of  subsistence  that  she  had  was  the  few  coins  earned 


496  FOLLE-FARWE. 

from  those  as  poor  almost  as  herself.  Often  these  went 
in  debt  to  her,  and  begged  for  a  little  time  to  get  the  piece 
or  two  of  base  metal  that  they  owed  her  ;  and  she  forgave 
them  such  debts  always,  not  having  the  heart  to  take  the 
last  miserable  pittance  from  some  trembling  withered 
hand  which  had  worked  through  fourscore  years  of  toil, 
and  found  no  payment  but  its  wrinkles  in  its  palm ;  not 
having  the  force  to  fill  her  own  platter  with  crusts  which 
could  only  be  purchased  by  the  hunger  cries  of  some 
starveling  infant,  or  by  the  barter  of  some  little  valueless 
cross  of  ivory  or  rosary  of  berries  long  cherished  in  some 
aching  breast  after  all  else  was  lost  or  spent. 

She  had  barely  tasted  food  that  day,  worst  of  all  she 
had  not  had  even  a  few  grains  to  scatter  to  the  hungry 
pigeons  as  they  had  fluttered  to  her  on  the  housetop  in 
the  stormy  twilight  as  the  evening  fell. 

She  had  lain  awake  all  the  night  hearing  the  strokes  of 
the  bells  sound  the  hours,  and  seeming  to  say  to  her  as 
they  beat  on  the  silence, — 

"  Dost  thou  dare  to  be  strong,  thou  ?  a  grain  of  dust,  a 
reed  of  the  river,  a  Nothing  ?" 

When  she  rose,  and  drew  back  the  iron  staple  that 
fastened  her  door,  and  went  out  on  the  crazy  stairway, 
she  struck  her  foot  against  a  thing  of  metal.  It  glittered 
in  the  feeble  beams  from  her  lamp.  She  took  it  up  ;  it 
was  a  little  precious  casket,  such  as  of  old  the  Red  Mouse 
lurked  in,  among  the  pearls,  to  spring  out  from  their 
whiteness  into  the  purer  snow  of  Gretchen's  bread. 

With  it  was  only  one  written  line : 

"  When  you  are  tired,  Folle-Farine  tn 

She  was  already  tired,  tired  with  the  horrible  thirsty 
weariness  of  the  young  lioness  starved  and  cramped  in  a 
cage  in  a  city. 

An  old  crone  sat  on  a  niche  on  the  wall.  She  thrust 
her  lean  bony  face,  lit  with  wolfs  eyes,  through  the  gloom. 

"Are  you  not  tired?"  she  muttered  in  the  formula 
taught  her.     "Are  you  not  tired,  Folle-Farine  V 

"  If  I  be,  what  of  that  ?"  she  answered,  and  she  thrust 
the  case  away  to  the  feet  of  the  woman,  still  shut,  and 
went  on  with  her  little  dim  taper  down  round  the  twist 
of  the  stairs. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  49T 

She  knew  what  she  did,  what  she  put  away.  She  had 
come  to  know,  too,  what  share  the  sex  of  her  mother 
takes  in  the  bringing  to  the  lips  of  their  kind  the  golden 
pear  that  to  most  needs  no  pressing. 

"  If  I  had  only  your  face,  and  your  chances,"  had  said 
to  her  that  day  a  serving-girl,  young,  with  sallow  cheeks, 
and  a  hollow  voice,  and  eyes  of  fever,  who  lived  in  a  den 
lower  down  on  the  stairway. 

"  Are  you  mad  that  you  hunger  here  when  you  might 
hang  yourself  with  diamonds  like  our  Lady  of  Atocha  ?" 
cried  a  dancing-woman  with  sullen  eyes  and  a  yellow 
skin  from  the  hither  side  of  the  mountains,  who  begged 
in  the  streets  all  day. 

So,  many  tongues  hissed  to  her  in  different  fashions. 
It  seemed  to  many  of  them  impious  in  one  like  her  to  dare 
be  stronger  than  the  gold  was  that  assailed  her,  to  dare 
to  live  up  there  among  the  clouds,  and  hunger,  and  thirst, 
and  keep  her  silence,  and  strike  dumb  all  the  mouths  that 
tried  to  woo  her  down,  and  shake  aside  all  the  hands  that 
strove  softly  to  slide  their  purchase-moneys  into  hers. 

For  they  chimed  in  chorus  as  the  bells  did : 

"  Strength  in  the  dust — in  a  reed — in  a  Nothing  V 

It  was  a  bitter  windy  morning ;  the  rain  fell  heavily ; 
there  were  no  stars  out,  and  the  air  was  sharp  and  raw. 
She  was  too  used  to  all  changes  of  weather  to  take  heed 
of  it,  but  her  thin  clothes  were  soaked  through,  and  her 
hair  was  drenched  as  she  crossed  the  courts  and  traversed 
the  passages  to  reach  her  various  employers. 

The  first  she  roused  was  a  poor  sickly  woman  sleeping 
feverishly  on  an  old  rope  mat ;  the  second  an  old  man 
wrestling  with  nightmare,  as  the  rain  poured  on  him 
through  a  hole  in  the  roof,  making  him  dream  that  he 
was  drowning. 

The  third  was  a  woman,  so  old  that  her  quarter  ac- 
credited her. with  a  century  of  age;  she  woke  mumbling 
that  it  was  hard  at  her  years  to  have  to  go  and  pick  rags 
for  a  crumb  of  bread. 

The  fourth  was  a  little  child  not  seven  ;  he  was  an 
orphan,  and  the  people  who  kept  him  sent  him  out  to  get 
herbs  in  the  outlying  villages  to  sell  in  the  streets,  and 

42* 


498  FOLLE-FAUINE. 

beat  him  if  he  let  other  children  be  beforehand  with  him. 
He  woke  sobbing ;  he  had  dreamed  of  his  dead  mother, 
and  cried  out  that  it  was  so  cold,  so  cold. 

There  were  scores  like  them  at  whose  doors  she  knocked, 
or  whose  chambers  she  entered.  The  brief  kind  night 
was  over,  and  they  had  to  arise  and  work, — or  die. 

"  Why  do  they  not  die  ?"  she  wondered ;  and  she 
thought  of  the  dear  gods  that  she  had  loved,  the  gods  of 
oblivion. 

Truly  there  were  no  gifts  like  their  gifts ;  and  yet  men 
knew  their  worth  so  little; — but  thrust  Hypnos  back  in 
scorn,  dashing  their  winecups  in  his  eyes  ;  and  mocked 
Oneiros,  calling  him  the  guest  of  love-sick  fools  and  of 
mad  poets  ;  and  against  Thanatos  strove  always  in  hatred 
and  terror  as  against  their  dreaded  foe. 

It  was  a  stange,  melancholy,  dreary  labor  this  into 
which  she  had  entered. 

It  was  all  dark.  The  little  light  she  bore  scarcely  shed 
its  rays  beyond  her  feet.  It  was  all  still.  The  winds 
sounded  infinitely  sad  among  those  vaulted  passages  and 
the  deep  shafts  of  the  stairways.  Now  and  then  a  woman's 
voice  in  prayer  or  a  man's  in  blasphemy  echoed  dully 
through  the  old  half-ruined  buildings.  Otherwise  an  in- 
tense silence  reigned  there,  where  all  save  herself  were 
sleeping. 

She  used  to  think  it  was  a  city  of  the  dead,  in  which 
she  alone  was  living. 

And  sometimes  she  had  not  the  heart  to  waken  them ; 
when  there  was  a  smile  on  some  wan  worn  face  that 
never  knew  one  in  its  waking  hours;  or  when  some 
childless  mother  in  her  lonely  bed  sleeping,  in  fancy  drew 
young  arms  about  her  throat. 

This  morning  when  all  her  tasks  were  done,  and  all  the 
toilers  summoned  to  another  day  of  pain,  she  retraced  her 
steps  slowly,  bearing1  the  light  aloft,  and  with  its  feeble 
rays  shed  on  the  colorless  splendor  of  her  face,  and  on  her 
luminous  dilated  troubled  eyes  that  were  forever  seeking 
what  they  never  found. 

A  long  vaulted  passage  stretched  between  her  and  the 
foot  of  the  steps  that  led  to  the  tow*er ;  many  doors  opened 
on  it,  the  winds  wailed  through  it,  and  the  ragged  clothes 


FOLLE-FARWE.  499 

of  the  tenants  blew  to  and  fro  upon  the  swaying  cords. 
She  traversed  it,  and  slowly  mounted  her  own  staircase, 
which  was  spiral  and  narrow,  with  little  loopholes  ever 
and  again  that  looked  out  upon  the  walls,  and  higher  on 
the  roofs,  and  higher  yet  upon  the  open  sky.  By  one  of 
these  she  paused  and  looked  out  wearily. 

It  was  dark  still  ;  great  low  rain-clouds  floated  by ;  a 
little  caged  bird  stirred  with  a  sad  note  ;  mighty  rains 
swept  by  from  the  westward,  sweet  with  the  smell  of  the 
distant  fields. 

Her  heart  ached  for  the  country.  * 

It  was  so  still  there  in  the  dusk  she  knew,  even  in  this 
wild  autumn  night,  which  there  would  be  so  purple  with 
leaf  shadow,  so  brown  with  embracing  branches,  so  gray 
with  silvery  faint  mists  of  lily,  white  with  virgin  snows. 
Ah,  God !  to  reach  it  once  again,  she  thought,  if  only  to 
die  in  it. 

And  yet  she  stayed  on  in  this,  which  was  to  her  the 
deepest  hell,  stayed  on  because  he — in  life  or  death — 
was  here. 

She  started  as  a  hand  touched  her  softly,  where  she 
stood  looking  through  the  narrow  space.  The  eyes  of 
Sartorian  smiled  on  her  through  the  twilight. 

"Do  you  shrink  still?"  he  said,  gently.  "Put  back 
your  knife ;  look  at  me  quietly  ;  you  will  not  have  the 
casket  ? — very  well.  Your  strength  is  folly ;  yet  it  is 
noble.  It  becomes  you.  I  do  you  good  for  ill.  I  have 
had  search  made  for  your  lover,  who  loves  not  you.  I 
have  found  him." 

"  Living  ?"  She  quivered  from 'head  to  foot ;  the  gray 
walls  reeled  round  her ;  she  feared,  she  hoped,  she  doubted, 
she  believed.  Was  it  hell  ?  Was  it  heaven  ?  She  could 
not  tell.  She  cared  not  which,  so  that  only  she  could 
look  once  more  upon  the  face  of  Arslan. 

"  Living,"  he  answered  her,  and  still  he  «miled.  "  Liv- 
ing. Come  with  me,  and  see  how  he  has  used  the  liberty 
you  gave.     Come." 

She  staggered  to  her  feet  and  rose,  and  held  her  knife 
close  in  the  bosom  of  her  dress,  and  with  passionate 
eyes  of  hope  and  dread  searched  the  face  of  the  old  man 
through  the  shadows. 


500  FOLLE-FARINE. 

"  It  is  the  truth  ?"  she  muttered.  "  If  you  mock  me, — 
if  you  lie " 

"  Your  knife  will  sheathe  itself  in  my  body,  I  know. 
Nay,  I  have  never  lied  to  you.  One  cannot  wear  a  velvet 
glove  to  tame  a  lioness.  Come  with  me ;  fear  nothing, 
Folle-Farine.  Come  with  me,  and  see  with  your  own 
eyesight  how  the  world  of  men  has  dealt  with  this  your 
god." 

"  I  will  come." 

Sartorian  gazed  at  her  in  silence. 
.  "  You  are  a  barbarian  ;  and  so  you  are  heroic  always. 
I*would  not  lie  to  you,  and  here  I  have  no  need.  Come; 
it  is  very  near  to  you.  A  breadth  of  stone  can  sever  two 
lives,  though  the  strength  of  all  the  world  cannot  unite 
them.     Come." 

She  gripped  the  knife  closer,  and,  with  feet  that  stum- 
bled as  the  feet  of  a  dumb  beast  that  goes  out  to  its 
slaughter,  followed  him,  through  the  dark  and  narrow 
ways.  She  had  no  fear  for  herself;  she  had  no  dread 
of  treachery  or  peril ;  for  herself  she  could  be  strong, 
always :  and  the  point  of  the  steel  was  set  hard  against 
her  breast ;  but  for  him  ? — had  the  gods  forgotten  ?  had 
he  forgot? 

She  was  sick,  and  cold,  and  white  with  terror  as  she 
went.  She  dreaded  the  unknown  thing  her  eyes  might 
look  upon.  She  dreaded  the  truth  that  she  had  sought 
to  learn  all  through  the  burning  months  of  summer,  all 
through  the  horrors  of  the  crowded  city.  Was  it  well 
with  him,  or  ill?  Had  the  gods  remembered  at  last? 
Had  the  stubborn  necks  of  men  been  bent  to  his  feet  ? 
Was  he  free  ? — free  to  rise  to  the  heights  of  lofty  desire, 
and  never  look  downward,  in  pity,  once  ? 

They  passed  in  silence  through  many  passage-ways  of 
the  great  stone  hive  of  human  life  in  which  she  dwelt. 
Once  only  Saatorian  paused  and  looked  back  and  spoke. 

"  If  you  find  him  in  a  woman's  arms,  lost  in  a  sloth  of 
passion,  what  then  ?  Will  you  say  still,  Let  him  have 
greatness  ?" 

In  the  gloom  he  saw  her  stagger  as  though  struck  upon 
the  head.  But  she  rallied  and  gazed  at  him  in  answer 
with  eyes  that  would  neither  change  nor  shrink. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  501 

"  What  is  that  to  you  tn  she  said,  in  her  sliut  teeth. 
"  Show  me  the  truth :  and  as  for  him, — he  has  a  right  to 
do  as  he  will.     Have  I  said  ever  otherwise?" 

He  led  the  way  onward  in  silence. 

This  passion,  so  heroic  even  in  its  barbarism,  so  faith- 
ful even  in  its  wretchedness,  so  pure  even  in  its  abandon- 
ment, almost  appalled  him, — and  yet  on  it  he  had  no 
pity. 

By  his  lips  the  world  spoke :  the  world  which,  to  a 
creature  nameless,  homeless,  godless,  friendless,  offered 
only  one  choice — shame  or  death ;  and  for  such  privilege 
of  choice  bade  her  be  thankful  to  men  and  to  their  deity. 

He  led  her  through  many  vaulted  ways,  and  up  the 
shaft  of  a  stone  stairway  in  a  distant  side  of  the  vast 
pile,  which,  from  holding  many  habitants  of  kings,  and 
monks,  and  scholars,  had  become  the  populous  home  of 
the  most  wretched  travailers  of  a  great  city. 

"  Wait  here,"  he  said,  and  drew  her  backward  into  a 
hollow  in  the  wall.     It  was  nearly  dark. 

As  she  stood  there  in  the  darkness  looking  down 
through  the  narrow  space,  there  came  a  shadow  to  her 
through  the  gloom, — a  human  shadow,  noiseless  and 
voiceless.  It  ascended  the  shaft  of  the  stairs  with  a 
silent,  swift  tread,  and  passed  by  her,  and  went  onward ; 
as  it  passed,  the  rays  of  her  lamp  were  shed  on  it,  and 
her  eyes  at  last  saw  the  face  of  Arslan. 

It  was  pale  as  death  ;  his  head  was  sunk  on  his 
breast ;  his  lips  muttered  without  the  sound  of  words,  his 
fair  hair  streamed  in  the  wind ;  he  moved  without  haste, 
without  pause,  with  the  pulseless  haste,  the  bloodless 
quiet  of  a  phantom. 

She  had  heard  men  talk  of  those  who,  being  dead,  yet 
dwelt  on  earth  and  moved  amidst  the  living.  She  had 
no  thought  of  him  in  that  moment  save  as  among  the 
dead.  But  he,  dead  or  living,  could  have  no  horror  for 
her  ;  he,  dead  or  living,  ruled  her  as  the  moon  the  sea, 
and  drew  her  after  him,  and  formed  the  one  law  of  her 
life. 

She  neither  trembled  nor  prayed,  nor  wept  nor  laughed, 
nor  cried  aloud  in  her  inconceivable  joy.  Her  heart 
stood  still,  as  though  some  hand  had  caught  and  gripped 


502  FOLLE-FAR1NE. 

it.  She  jvas  silent  in  the  breathless  silence  of  an  un- 
speakable awe ;  and  with  a  step  as  noiseless  as  his  own, 
she  glided  in  his  path  through  the  deep  shaft  of  the  stairs, 
upward  and  upward  through  the  hushed  house,  through 
the  innumerable  chambers,  through  the  dusky  shadows, 
through  the  chill  of  the  bitter  dawn,  through  the  close  hive 
of  the  sleeping  creatures,  up  and  up,  into  the  very  roof 
itself,  where  it  seemed  to  meet  the  low  and  lurid  clouds,  and 
to  be  lifted  from  the  habitations  and  the  homes  of  men. 

A  doorway  was  open ;  he  passed  through  it ;  beyond 
it  was  a  bare  square  place  through  which  there  came  the 
feeblest  rays  of  dawn,  making  the  yellow  oil  flame  that 
burned  in  it  look  dull  and  hot  and  garish.  He  passed 
into  the  chamber  and  stood  still  a  moment,  with  his  head 
dropped  on  his  chest  and  his  lips  muttering  sounds  with- 
out meaning. 

The  light  fell  on  his  face ;  she  saw  that  he  was  living. 
Crouched  on  his  threshold,  she  watched  him,  her  heart 
leaping  with  a  hope  so  keen,  a  rapture  so  intense,  that 
its  very  strength  and  purity  suffocated  her  like  some 
mountain  air  too  pure  and  strong  for  human  lungs  to 
breathe. 

He  walked  in  his  sleep ;  that  sleep  so  strange  and  so 
terrible,  which  drugs  the  senses  and  yet  stimulates  the 
brain ;  in  which  the  sleeper  moves,  acts,  remembers,  re- 
turns to  daily  habits,  and  resorts  to  daily  haunts,  and  yet 
to  all  the  world  around  him  is  deaf  and  blind  and  in- 
different as  the  dead. 

The  restless  brain,  unstrung  by  too  much  travail  and 
too  little  food,  had  moved  the  limbs  unconsciously  to 
their  old  haunts  and  habits;  and  in  his  sleep,  though 
sightless  and  senseless,  he  seemed  still  to  know  and  still 
to  suffer.  For  he  moved  again,  after  a  moment's  rest, 
and  passed  straight  to  the  wooden  trestles  on  which  a 
great  canvas  was  outstretched.  He  sank  down  on  a 
rough  bench  in  front  of  it,  and  passed  his  hand  before  the 
picture  with  the  fond,  caressing  gesture  with  which  a 
painter  shows  to  another  some  wave  of  light,  some  grace 
of  color,  and  then  sat  there,  stupidly,  steadfastly,  with 
his  elbows  on  his  knees  and  his  head  on  his  hands,  and 
his  eyes  fastened  on  the  creation  before  him. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  503 

It  was  a  rugged,  desolate,  wind-blown  chamber,  set  in 
the  topmost  height  of  the  old  pile,  beaten  on  by  all 
snows,  drenched  by  all  rains,  rocked  by  all  storms,  bare, 
comfortless,  poor  to  the  direst  stretch  of  poverty,  close 
against  the  clouds,  and  with  the  brazen  bells  and  teeming 
roofs  of  the  city  close  beneath. 

She  had  dwelt  by  him  for  many  weeks,  and  no  sense 
of  his  presence  had  come  to  her,  no  instinct  had  awakened 
in  him  towards  the  love  which  clung  to  him  with  a  faith- 
fulness only  as  great  as  its  humility.  She,  praying 
always  to  see  this  man  once  more,  and  die — had  been 
severed  from  him  by  the  breadth  of  a  stone  as  by  an 
ocean's  width  ;  and  he — doomed  to  fail  always,  spending 
his  life  in  one  endeavor,  and  by  that  one  perpetually 
vanquished — he  had  had  no  space  left  to  look  up  at  a 
nameless  creature  with  lithe  golden  limbs,  about  whose 
head  the  white-winged  pigeons  fluttered  at  twilight  on 
the  housetop. 

His  eyes  had  swept  over  her  more  than  once  ;  but  they 
had  had  no  sight  for  her ;  they  were  a  poet's  eyes  that 
saw  forever  in  fancy  faces  more  amorous  and  divine, 
limbs  lovelier  and  more  lily-like,  mouths  sweeter  and  more 
persuasive  in  their  kiss,  than  any  they  ever  saw  on 
earth. 

One  passion  consumed  him,  and  left  him  not  pause, 
nor  breath,  nor  pity,  nor  sorrow  for  any  other  thing. 
He  rested  from  his  work  and  knew  that  it  was  good; 
but  this  could  not  content  him,  for  this  his  fellow-men 
denied. 

There  was  scarcely  any  light,  but  there  was  enough 
for  her  to  read  his  story  by — the  story  of  continual 
failure. 

Yet  where  she  hid  upon  the  threshold,  her  heart  beat 
with  wildest  music  of  recovered  joy  ;  she  had  found  him, 
and  she  had  found  him  alone. 

No  woman  leaned  upon  his  breast ;  no  soft  tossed  hair 
bathed  his  arms,  no  mouth  murmured  against  his  own. 
He  was  alone.  Her  only  rival  was  that  one  great  pas- 
sion with  which  she  had  never  in  her  humility  dreamed 
to  mete  herself. 

Dead  he  might  be  to  all  the  world  of  men,  dead  in  his 


504  FOLLE-FARWE. 

own  sight  by  a  worse  fate  than  that  or  any  could  give; 
but  for  her  he  was  living, — to  her  what  mattered  failure 
or  scorn,  famine  or  woe,  defeat  or  despair  ? 

She  saw  his  face  once  more. 

She  crouched  upon  his  threshold  now,  and  trembled 
with  the  madness  of  her  joy,  and  courted  its  torture.  She 
dared  not  creep  and  touch  his  hand,  she  dared  not  steal 
and  kneel  a  moment  at  his  feet. 

He  had  rejected  her.  He  had  had  no  need  of  her.  He 
had  left  her  with  the  first  hour  that  freedom  came  to  him. 
He  had  seen  her  beauty,  and  learned  its  lines  and  hues, 
and  used  them  for  his  art,  and  let  it  go  again,  a  soulless 
thing  that  gave  him  no  delight ;  a  thing  so  slight  he  had 
thought  it  scarcely  worth  his  while  even  to  break  it  for 
an  hour's  sport.  This  was  what  he  had  deemed  her; 
that  she  knew. 

She  accepted  the  fate  at  his  hands  with  the  submission 
that  was  an  integral  part  of  the  love  she  bore  him.  She 
had  never  thought  of  equality  between  herself  and  him  ; 
he  might  have  beaten  her,  or  kicked  her,  as  a  brute  his 
dog,  and  she  would  not  have  resisted  nor  resented. 

To  find  him,  to  watch  him  from  a  distance,  to  serve 
him  in  any  humble  ways  she  might;  to  give  him  his 
soul's  desire,  if  any  barter  of  her  own  soul  could  pur- 
chase it, — this  was  all  she  asked.  She  had  told  him  that 
he  could  have  no  sins  to  her,  and  it  had  been  no  empty 
phrase. 

She  crouched  on  his  threshold,  scarcely  daring  to 
breathe  lest  he  should  hear  her. 

In  the  dull  light  of  dawn  and  of  the  sickly  lamp  she  saw 
the  great  canvas  on  the  trestles  that  his  eyes,  without 
seeing  it,  yet  stared  at ; — it  was  the  great  picture  of  the 
Barabbas,  living  its  completed  life  in  color:  beautiful, 
fearful,  and  divine,  full  of  its  majesty  of  godhead  and  its 
mockery  of  man. 

She  knew  then  how  the  seasons  since  they  had  parted 
had  been  spent  with  him  ;  she  knew  then,  without  any 
telling  her  in  words,  how  he  had  given  up  all  his  nights 
and  days,  all  his  scant  store  of  gold,  all  leisure  and  com- 
fort and  peace,  all  hours  of  summer  sunshine  and  of  mid- 
night cold,  all  laughter  of  glad  places,  and  all  pleasures 


FOLLE-FARINE.  505 

of  passion  or  of  ease,  to  render  perfect  this  one  work  by 
which  he  had  elected  to  make  good  his  fame  or  perish. 

And  she  knew  that  he  must  have  failed ;  failed  always ; 
that  spending  his  life  in  one  endeavor,  circumstance  had 
been  stronger  than  he,  and  had  baffled  him  perpetually. 
She  knew  that  it  was  still  in  vain  that  he  gave  his  peace 
and  strength  and  passions,  all  the  golden  years  of  man- 
hood, and  all  the  dreams  and  delights  of  the  senses ;  and 
that  although  these  were  a  treasure  which,  once  spent, 
came  back  nevermore  to  the  hands  which  scatter  them, 
he  had  failed  to  purchase  with  them,  though  they  were 
his  all,  this  sole  thing  which  he  besought  from  the  way- 
wardness of  fate. 

"I  will  find  a  name  or  a  grave,"  he  had  said,  when 
they  had  parted :  she,  with  the  instinct  of  that  supreme 
love  which  clung  to  him  with  a  faithfulness  only  equaled 
by  its  humility,  needed  no  second  look  upon  his  face  to 
see  that  no  gods  had  answered  him  save  the  gods  of  ob- 
livion ; — the  gods  whose  pity  he  rejected  and  whose 
divinity  he  denied. 

For  to  the  proud  eyes  of  a  man,  looking  eagle-wise  at 
the  far-off  sun  of  a  great  ambition,  the  coming  of  Than- 
atos  could  seem  neither  as  consolation  nor  as  vengeance, 
but  only  as  the  crowning  irony  in  the  mockery  and  the 
futility  of  life. 

The  dawn  grew  into  morning. 

A  day  broke  full  of  winds  and  of  showers,  with  the 
dark  masses  of  clouds  tossed  roughly  hither  and  thither, 
and  the  bells  of  the  steeples  blown  harshly  out  of  time 
and  tune,  and  the  wet  metal  roofs  glistening  through  a 
steam  of  rain. 

The  sleepers  wakened  of  themselves  or  dreamed  on  as 
they  might. 

She  had  no  memory  of  them. 

She  crouched  in  the  gloom  on  his  threshold,  watching 
him. 

He  sank  awhile  into  profound  stupor,  sitting  there 
before  his  canvas,  with  his  head  dropped  and  his  eyelids 
closed.  Then  suddenly  a  shudder  ran  through  him ;  he 
awoke  with  a  start,  and  shook  off  the  lethargy  which 

43 


506  FOLLE-FARINE. 

drugged  him.  He  rose  slowly  to  his  feet,  and  looked  at 
the  open  shutters,  and  saw  that  it  was  morning. 

"Another  day — another  day !"  he  muttered,  wearily ; 
and  he  turned  from  the  Barabbas. 

Towards  the  form  on  his  threshold  he  had  never  looked. 

She  sat  without  and  waited. 

Waited — for  what  ?  She  did  not  know.  She  did  not 
dare  even  to  steal  to  him  and  touch  his  hand  with  such 
a  timid  caress  as  a  beaten  dog  ventures  to  give  the  hand 
of  the  master  who  has  driven  it  from  him. 

For  even  a  beaten  dog  is  a  creature  less  humble  and 
timid  than  a  woman  that  loves  and  whose  love  is  re- 
jected. 

He  took  up  a  palette  ready  set,  and  went  to  a  blank 
space  of  canvas  and  began  to  cover  it  with  shapes  and 
shadows  on  the  unconscious  creative  instinct  of  the  sur- 
charged brain.  Faces  and  foliage,  beasts  and  scrolls,  the 
heads  of  gods,  the  folds  of  snakes,  forms  of  women  rising 
from  flames  and  clouds,  the  flowers  of  Paradise  blossom- 
ing amidst  the  corruption  and  tortures  of  Antenora.  All 
were  cast  in  confusion,  wave  on  wave,  shape  on  shape, 
horror  with  loveliness,  air  with  flame,  heaven  with  hell, 
in  all  the  mad  tumult  of  an  artist's  dreams. 

With  a  curse  he  flung  his  brushes  from  him,  and  cast 
himself  face  downward  on  his  bed  of  straw. 

The  riot  of  fever  was  in  his  blood.  Famine,  sleepless 
nights,  unnatural  defiance  of  all  passions  and  all  joys, 
the  pestilence  rife  in  the  crowded  quarter  of  the  poor, — 
all  these  had  done  their  work  upon  him.  He  had  breathed 
in  the  foul  air  of  plague-stricken  places,  unconscious  of 
its  peril ;  he  had  starved  his  body,  reckless  of  the  flight 
of  time ;  he  had  consumed  his  manhood  in  one  ceaseless, 
ruthless,  and  absorbing  sacrifice;  and  Nature,  whom  he 
had  thus  outraged,  and  thought  to  outrage  with  impunity 
as  mere  bestial  feebleness,  took  her  vengeance  on  him 
and  cast  him  here,  and  mocked  him,  crying, — 

"A  deathless  name  ? — Oh,  madman !  A  little  breath  on 
the  mouths  of  men  in  all  the  ages  to  come  ? — Oh,  fool ! 
Hereafter  you  cry  ? — Ob,  fool ! — heaven  and  earth  may 
pass  away  like  a  scroll  that  is  burnt  into  ashes,  and  the 
future  you  live  for  may  never  come — neither  for  you  nor 


FOLLE-FARINE.  50? 

the  world.  What  you  may  gain — who  shall  say  ?  But 
all  you  have  missed,  I  know.  And  no  man  shall  scorn 
me — and  pass  unscathed." 

There  came  an  old  lame  woman  by,  laboriously  bearing 
a  load  of  firewood.     She  paused  beside  the  threshold. 

"  You  look  yonder,"  she  said,  resting  her  eyes  on  the 
stranger  crouching  on  the  threshold.  "  Are  you  anything 
to  that  man  ?" 

Silence  only  answered  her. 

"  He  has  no  friends,"  muttered  the  cripple.  "No  hu- 
man being  has  ever  come  to  him  ;  and  he  has  been  here 
many  months.  He  will  be  mad — very  soon.  *  I  have 
seen  it  before.  Those  men  do  not  die.  Their  bodies  are 
too  strong.  But  their  brains  go, — look  you.  And  their 
brains  go,  and  yet  they  live — to  fourscore  and  ten  many 
a  time — shut  up  and  manacled  like  wild  beasts." 

Folle-Farine  shivered  where  she  crouched  in  the  shadow 
of  the  doorway ;  she  still  said  nothing. 

The  crone  mumbled  on  indifferent  of  answer,  and  yet 
pitiful,  gazing  into  the  chamber. 

"  I  have  watched  him  often ;  he  is  fair  toiook  at — one 
is  never  too  old  to  care  for  that.  All  winter,  spring,  and 
summer  he  has  lived  so  hard; — so  cold  too  and  so  silent 
— painting  that  strange  thing  yonder.  He  looks  like  a 
king — he  lives  like  a  beggar.  The  picture  was  his  god : — ■ 
see  you.  And  no  doubt  he  has  set  his  soul  on  fame — 
men  will.  All  the  world  is  mad.  One  day  in  the  spring- 
time it  was  sent  somewhere — that  great  thing  yonder  on 
the  trestles, — to  be  seen  by  the  world,  no  doubt.  And 
whoever  its  fate  lay  with  would  not  see  any  greatness  in 
it,  or  else  no  eyes  would  look.  It  came  back  as  it  went. 
No  doubt  they  knew  best ; — in  the  world.  That  was  in 
the  spring  of  the  year.  He  has  been  like  this  ever  since. 
Walking  most  nights; — starving  most  days; — I  think. 
But  he  is  always  sileDt." 

The  speaker  raised  her  wood  and  went  slowly,  mutter- 
ing as  she  limped  down  each  steep  stair, — 

"  There  must  hang  a  crown  of  stars  I  suppose — some- 
where— since  so  many  of  them  forever  try  to  reach  one. 
But  all  they  ever  get  here  below  is  a  crown  of  straws  in 
a  madhouse." 


508  FOLLE-FARINE. 

"  The  woman  says  aright,"  the  voice  of  Sartorian  mur- 
mured low  against  her  ear. 

She  had  forgotten  that  he  was  near  from  the  first  mo- 
ment that  her  eyes  had  once  more  fed  themselves  upon 
the  face  of  Arslan. 

"  The  woman  says  aright,"  he  echoed,  softly.  "  This 
man  will  perish;  his  body  may  not  die,  but  his  brain  will 
— surely.     And  yet  for  his  life  you  would  give  yours  ?" 

She  looked  up  with  a  gleam  of  incredulous  hope ;  she 
was  yet  so  ignorant ;  she  thought  there  might  yet  be 
ways  by  which  one  life  could  buy  another's  from  the 
mercy  of  earth,  from  the  pity  of  heaven. 

"  Ah !"  she  murmured  with  a  swift  soft  trembling 
eagerness.  "  If  the  gods  would  but  remember  ! — and 
take  me — instead.    But  they  forget — they  forget  always." 

He  smiled. 

"Ay,  truly,  the  gods  forget.  But  if  you  would  give 
yourself  to  death  for  him,  why  not  do  a  lesser  thing  ? — 
give  your  beauty,  Folle-Farine?" 

A  scarlet  flush  burned  her  from  head  to  foot.  For 
once  she  mistook  his  meaning.  She  thought,  how  could 
a  beauty  that  he — who  perished  there  —  had  scorned, 
have  rarity  or  grace  in  those  cold  eyes,  of  force  or  light 
enough  to  lure  him  from  his  grave  ? 

The  low  melody  of  the  voice  in  her  ear  flowed  on. 

"  See  you — what  he  lacks  is  only  the  sinew  that  gold 
gives.  What  he  has  done  is  great.  The  world  rightly 
seeing  must  fear  it ;  and  fear  is  the  highest  homage  the 
world  ever  gives.  But  he  is  penniless  ;  and  he  has  many 
foes ;  and  jealousy  can  with  so  much  ease  thrust  aside  the 
greatness  which  it  fears  into  obscurity,  when  that  great- 
ness is  marred  by  the  failures  and  the  feebleness  of  pov- 
erty. Genius  scorns  the  power  of  gold :  it  is  wrong ; 
gold  is  the  war  scythe  on  its  chariot,  which  mows  down 
the  millions  of  its  foes  and  gives  free  passage  to  the  sun- 
coursers,  with  which  it  leaves  those  heavenly  fields  of 
light  for  the  gross  battle-fields  of  earth." 

"You  were  to  give  that  gold,"  she  muttered,  in  her 
throat. 

"  Nay,  not  so.  I  was  to  set  him  free :  to  find  his  fame 
or  his  grave ;  as  he  might.     He  will  soon  find  one,  no 


FOLLE-FARINE.  509 

doubt.  Nay;  you  would  make  no  bond  with  me,  Folle- 
Farine.  You  scorned  my  golden  pear.  Otherwise — how 
great  they  are  I  That  cruel  scorn,  that  burning  color, 
that  icelike  coldness  !  If  the  world  could  be  brought  to 
see  them  once  aright,  the  world  would  know  that  no 
powers  greater  than  these  have  been  among  it  for  many 
ages.  But  who  shall  force  the  world  to  look  ? — who  ? 
It  is  so  deaf,  so  slow  of  foot,  so  blind,  unless  the  film  be- 
fore its  eyes  be  opened  by  gold." 

He  paused  and  waited. 

She  watched  silent  on  the  threshold  there. 

The  cruel  skill  of  his  words  cast  on  her  all  the  weight 
of  this  ruin  which  they  watched. 

Her  love  must  needs  be  weak,  her  pledge  to  the  gods 
must  needs  be  but  imperfectly  redeemed,  since  she,  who 
had  bade  them  let  her  perish  in  his  stead,  recoiled  from 
the  lingering  living  death  of  any  shame,  if  such  could 
save  him. 

The  sweet  voice  of  Sartorian  murmured  on : 

"  Nay ;  it  were  easy.  He  has  many  foes.  He  daunts 
the  world  and  scourges  it.  Men  hate  him,  and  thrust 
him  into  oblivion.  Yet  it  were  easy  ! — a  few  praises  to 
the  powerful,  a  few  bribes  to  the  base,  and  yonder  thing 
once  lifted  up  in  the  full  light  of  the  world,  would  make 
him  great — beyond  any  man's  dispute — forever.  I  could 
do  it,  almost  in  a  day ;  and  he  need  never  know.  But, 
then,  you  are  not  tired,  Folle-Farine!" 

She  writhed  from  him,  as  the  doe  struck  to  the  ground 
writhes  from  the  hounds  at  her  throat. 

**  Kill  me  !"  she  muttered.  "  Will  not  that  serve  you  ? 
Kill  me — and  save  him  I" 

Sartorian  smiled. 

"Ah  !  you  are  but  weak,  after  all,  Folle-Farine.  You 
would  die  for  that  man's  single  sake, — so  you  say ;  and 
yet  it  is  not  him  whom  you  love.  It  is  yourself.  If  this 
passion  of  yours  were  great  and  pure,  as  you  say,  would 
you  pause  ?  Could  you  ask  yourself  twice  if  what  you 
think  your  shame  would  not  grow  noble  and  pure  beyond 
all  honor,  being  embraced  for  his  sake  ?  Nay ;  you  are 
weak,  like  all  your  sex.  You  would  die,  so  you  say.  To 
say  it  is  easy  j  but  to  live,  that  were  harder.     You  will 

43* 


510  FOLLE-FARINE. 

not  sacrifice  yourself — so.  And  yet  it  were  greater  far, 
Folle-Farine,  to  endure  for  his  sake  in  silence  one  look  of 
his  scorn,  than  to  brave,  in  visionary  phrase,  the  thrusts 
of  a  thousand  daggers,  the  pangs  of  a  thousand  deaths. 
Kill  you  !  vain  words  cost  but  little.  But  to  save  him  by 
sacrifice  that  he  shall  never  acknowledge ;  to  reach  a 
heroism  which  he  shall  ever  regard  as  a  cowardice ;  to 
live  and  see  him  pass  you  by  in  cold  contempt,  while  in  your 
heart  you  shut  your  secret,  and  know  that  you  have  given 
him  his  soul's  desire,  and  saved  the  genius  in  him  from  a 
madman's  cell  and  from  a  pauper's  grave — ah  I  that  is 
beyond  you  ;  beyond  any  woman,  perhaps.  And  yet 
your  love  seemed  great  enough  almost  to  reach  such  a 
height  as  this,  I  thought." 

He  looked  at  her  once,  then  turned  away. 

He  left  in  her  soul  the  barbed  sting  of  remorse.  He 
had  made  her  think  her  faith,  her  love,  her  strength,  her 
sinless  force,  were  but  the  cowardly  fruit  of  crudest  self- 
love,  that  dared  all  things  in  words — yet  in  act  failed. 

To  save  him  by  any  martyrdom  of  her  body  or  her 
soul,  so  she  had  sworn  ;  yet  now ! — Suddenly  she  seemed 
base  to  herself,  and  timorous,  and  false. 

When  daybreak  came  fully  over  the  roofs  of  the  city, 
it  found  him  senseless,  sightless,  dying  in  a  garret :  the 
only  freedom  that  he  had  reached  was  the  delirious  lib- 
erty of  the  brain,  which,  in  its  madness,  casts  aside  all 
bonds  of  time  and  place  and  memory  and  reason. 

All  the  day  she  watched  beside  him  there,  amidst  the 
brazen  clangor  of  the  bells  and  scream  of-  the  rough 
winds  above  the  roofs. 

In  the  gloom  of  the  place,  the  burning  color  of  the 
great  canvas  of  Jerusalem  glowed  in  its  wondrous  pomp 
and  power  against  all  the  gray,  cold  poverty  of  the 
wretched  place.  And  the  wanton  laughed  with  her  lover 
on  the  housetop ;  and  the  thief  clutched  the  rolling  gold  ; 
and  the  children  lapped  the  purple  stream  of  the  wasted 
wine  ;  and  the  throngs  flocked  after  the  thief,  whom  they 
had  elected  for  their  god ;  and  ever  and  again  a  stray, 
flickering  ray  of  light  flashed  from  the  gloom  of  the  deso- 
late chamber,  and  struck  upon  it  till  it  glowed  like  flame  ; 
— this  mighty  parable,  whereby  the  choice  of  the  people 


FOLLE-FARWE.  511 

was  symbolized  for  all  time ;  the  choice  eternal,  which 
never  changes,  but  forever  turns  from  all  diviner  life  to 
grovel  in  the  dust  before  the  Beast. 

The  magnificence  of  thought,  the  glory  of  imagina- 
tion, the  radiance  of  color  which  the  canvas  held,  served 
only  to  make  more  naked,  more  barren,  more  hideous  the 
absolute  desolation  which  reigned  around.  Not  one  grace, 
not  one  charm,  not  one  consolation,  had  been  left  to  the 
life  of  the  man  who  had  sacrificed  all  things  to  the 
inexorable  tyranny  of  his  genius.  Destitution,  in  its 
ghastliest  and  most  bitter  meaning,  was  alone  his  recom- 
pense and  portion.  Save  a  few  of  the  tools  and  pig- 
ments of  his  art,  and  a  little  opium  in  a  broken  glass, 
there  was  nothing  there  to  stand  between  him  and  utter 
famine.  ^ 

When  her  eyes  had  first  dwelt  upon  him  lying  sense- 
less  under  the  gaze  of  the  gods,  he  had  not  been  more 
absolutely  destitute  than  he  was  now.  The  hard  sharp 
outlines  of  his  fleshless  limbs,  the  sunken  temples,  the 
hollow  cheeks,  the  heavy  respiration  which  spoke  each 
breath  a  pang, — all  these  told  their  story  with  an  elo- 
quence more  cruel  than  lies  in  any  words. 

He  had  dared  to  scourge  the  world  without  gold  in  his 
hand  wherewith  to  bribe  it  to  bear  his  stripes  ;  and  the 
world  had  been  stronger  than  he,  and  had  taken  its  ven- 
geance, and  had  cast  him  here  powerless. 

All  the  day  through  she  watched  beside  him — watched 
the  dull  mute  suffering  of  stupor,  which  was  only  broken 
by  fierce  unconscious  words  muttered  in  the  unknown 
tongue  of  his  birth-country.  She  could  givTe  him  no  aid, 
no  food,  no  succor ;  she  was  the  slave  of  the  poorest  of 
the  poor  ;  she  had  not  upon  her  even  so  much  as  a  copper 
piece  to  buy  a  crust  of  bread,  a  stoup  of  wine,  a  little 
cluster  of  autumn  fruit  to  cool  her  burning  lips.  She 
had  nothing, — she,  who  in  the  world  of  men  had  dared 
to  be  strong,  and  to  shut  her  lips,  and  to  keep  her  hands 
clean,  and  her  feet  straight ;  she,  whose  soul  had  been 
closed  against  the  Red  Mouse. 

If  she  had  gone  down  among  the  dancing  throngs,  and 
rioted  with  them,  and  feasted  with  them,  and  lived  vilely, 
they  would  have  hung  her  breast  with  gems,  and  paved 


512  EOLLE-FARINE. 

her  path  with  gold.  That  she  knew ;  and  she  could  have 
saved  him. 

Where  she  kneeled  beside  his  bed  she  drew  his  hands 
against  her  heart,— timidly,  lest  consciousness  should 
come  to  him  and  he  should  curse  her  and  drive  her  thence 
— and  laid  her  lips  on  them,  and  bathed  them  in  the 
scorching  dew  of  her  hot  tears,  and  prayed  him  to  par- 
don her  if  it  had  been  weakness  in  her, — if  it  had  been 
feebleness  and  self-pity  thus  to  shrink  from  any  abase- 
ment, any  vileness,  any  martyrdom,  if  such  could  have 
done  him  service. 

She  did  not  know  ;  she  felt  astray  and  blind  and  full  of 
guilt.  It  might  be — so  she  thought — that  it  was  thus  the 
gods  had  tested  her;  thus  they  had  bade  her  suffer  shame 
to  give  him  glory  ;  thus  they  had  tried  her  strength, — 
and  found  her  wauting. 

Herself,  she  was  so  utterly  nothing  in  her  own  sight, 
and  he  was  so  utterly  all  in  all ;  her  life  was  a  thing  so 
undesired  and  so  valueless,  and  his  a  thing  so  great  and 
so  measureless  in  majesty,  that  it  seemed  to  her  she  might 
have  erred  in  thrusting  away  infamy,  since  infamy  would 
have  brought  with  it  gold  to  serve  him. 

Dignity,  innocence,  strength,  pride — what  right  had  she 
to  these,  what  title  had  she  to  claim  them — she  who  had 
been  less  than  the  dust  from  her  birth  upward  ? 

To  perish  for  him  anyhow — that  was  all  that  she  had 
craved  in  prayer  of  the  gods.  And  she  watched  him 
now  all  through  the  bitter  day ;  watched  him  dying  of 
hunger,  of  fever,  of  endless  desire,  of  continual  failure, — 
and  was  helpless.  More  helpless  even  than  she  had  been 
when  first  she  had  claimed  back  his  life  from  Thanatos. 

Seven  days  she  watched  thus  by  him  amidst  the  metal 
clangor  of  the  bells,  amidst  the  wailing  of  the  autumn 
winds  between  the  roofs. 

She  moistened  his  lips  with  a  little  water ;  it  was  all  he 
took.  A -few  times  she  left  him  and  stole  down  amidst 
the  people  whom  she  had  served,  and  was  met  by  a  curse 
from  most  of  them ;  for  they  thought  that  she  tended 
some  unknown  fever  which  she  might  bring  amidst  them, 
so  they  drove  her  back,  and  would  hear  naught  of  her. 
A  few,  more  pitiful  than  the  rest,  flung  her  twice  or  thrice  * 


FOLLE-FARINE.  513 

a  little  broken  bread  ;  she  took  it  eagerly,  and  fed  on  it, 
knowing  that  she  must  keep  life  in  her  by  some  food,  or 
leave  him  utterly  alone.  For  him  she  had  laid  down  all 
pride;  for  him  she  would  have  kissed  the  feet  of  the 
basest  or  sued  to  the  lowest  for  alms. 

And  when  the  people — whose  debts  to  her  she  had 
often  forgiven,  and  whom  she  had  once  fancied  had  borne 
her  a  little  love — drove  her  from  them  with  harshest  re- 
viling, she  answered  nothing,  but  dropped  her  head  and 
turned  and  crept  again  up  the  winding  stairs  to  kneel  be- 
side his  couch  of  straw,  and  wonder,  in  the  bewildered 
anguish  of  her  aching  brain,  if  indeed  evil  were  good, — 
since  evil  alone  could  save  him. 

Seven  days  went  by  ;  the  chimes  of  the  bells  blown  on 
the  wild  autumn  winds  in  strange  bursts  of  jangled 
sound  ;  the  ceaseless  murmur  of  the  city's  crowd  surging 
ever  on  the  silence  from  the  far  depths  below ;  sunrise 
and  moonrise  following  one  another  with  no  change  in 
the  perishing  life  that  she  alone  guarded,  whilst  every  day 
the  light  that  freshly  rose  upon  the  world  found  the  pic- 
ture of  the  Barabbas,  and  shone  on  the  god  rejected  and 
the  thief  adored. 

Every  night  during  those  seven  days  the  flutelike  voice 
of  her  tempter  made  its  hated  music  on  her  ear.  It  asked 
always, — 

"Are  you  tired,  Folle-Farine  V 

Her  ears  were  always  deaf;  her  lips  were  always 
dumb. 

On  the  eighth  night  he  paused  a  little  longer  by  her  in 
the  gloom. 

"  He  dies  there,"  he  said,  slowly  resting  his  tranquil, 
musing  gaze  upon  the  bed  of  straw.  "  It  is  a  pity.  So 
little  would  save  him  still.  A  little  wine,  a  little  fruit, 
a  little  skill, — his  soul's  desire  when  his  sense  returns. 
So  little — and  he  would  live,  and  he  would  be  great ; 
and  the  secret  sins  of  the  Barabbas  would  scourge  the 
nations,  and  the  nations,  out  of  very  fear  and  very  shame, 
would  lift  their  voices  loud  and  hail  him  prophet  and 
seer." 

Her  strength  was  broken  as  she  heard.  She  turned 
and  flung  herself  in  supplication  at  his  feet. 


5H  FOLLE-FARINE. 

"  So  little — so  little  ;  and  you  hold  your  hand  !" 

Sartorian  smiled. 

"Nay  ;  you  hold  your  silence,  Folle-Farine." 

She  did  not  move;  her  upraised  face  spoke  without 
words  the  passion  of  her  prayer. 

"Save  him! — save  him!  So  little,  so  you  say;  and 
the  gods  will  not  hear." 

"  The  gods  are  all  dead,  Folle-Farine." 

"  Save  him  !     You  are  as  a  god  1     Save  him  !" 

"I  am  but  a  mortal,  Folle-Farine.  Can  I  open  the 
gates  of  the  tomb,  or  close  them  t* 

"  You  can  save  him, — for  you  have  gold." 

He  smiled  still. 

"  Ah  !  you  learn  at  last  that  there  is  but  one  god !  You 
have  been  slow  to  believe,  Folle-Farine !" 

She  clung  to  him  ;  she  writhed  around  him ;  she  kissed 
with  her  soilless  lips  the  base  dust  at  his  feet. 

"  You  hold  the  keys  of  the  world ;  you  can  save  the  life 
of  his  body  ;  you  can  give  him  the  life  of  his  soul.  You 
are  a  beast,  a  devil,  a  thing  foul  and  unclean,  and  without 
mercy,  and  cruel  as  a  lie  ;  and  therefore  you  are  the  thing 
that  men  follow,  and  worship,  and  obey.  I  know ! — I 
know  !     You  can  save  him  if  you  will !" 

She  laughed  where  she  was  stretched  upon  the  ground, 
a  laugh  that  stayed  the  smile  upon  his  mouth. 

He  stooped,  and  the  sweetness  of  his  voice  was  low 
and  soft  as  the  south  wind. 

"  I  will  save  him,  if  you  say  that  you  are  tired, 
Folle-Farine." 

Where  she  was  stretched  face  downward  at  his  feet  she 
shuddered,  as  though  the  folds  of  a  snake  curled  round 
her,  and  stifled,  and  slew  her  with  a  touch. 

"  I  cannot !"  she  muttered  faintly  in  her  throat. 

11  Then  let  him  die !"  he  said  ;  and  turned  away. 

Once  again  be  smiled. 

The  hours  passed  ;  she  did  not  mov.e  ;  stretched  there, 
she  wrestled  with  her  agony  as  the  fate-pursued  wrestled 
with  their  doom  on  the  steps  of  the  temple,  while  the 
dread  Eumenides  drew  round  them  and  waited — waiting 
in  cold  patience  for  the  slow  sure  end. 

She  arose  and  went  to  his  side  as  a  dying  beast  in  the 


FOLLE-FARINE.  515 

public  roadway  under  a  blow  staggers  to   its  feet  to 
breathe  its  last. 

"  Let  him  die  1"  she  muttered,  with  lips  dry  as  the  lips 
of  the  dead.     "  Let  him  die  1" 

Once  more  the  choice  was  left  to  her.  So  men  said  : 
and  the  gods  were  dead. 

An  old  man,  with  a  vulture's  eyes  and  bony  fingers, 
and  rags  that  were  plague-stricken  with  the  poisons  of 
filth  and  of  disease,  had  followed  and  looked  at  her  in  the 
doorway,  and  kicked  her  where  she  lay. 

11  He  owes  me  twenty  days  for  the  room,"  he  muttered, 
while  his  breath  scorched  her  throat  with  the  fumes  of 
drink.  "A  debt  is  a  debt.  To-morrow  I  will  take  the 
canvas;  it  will  do  to  burn.  You  shiver? — fool  I  If 
you  chose,  you  could  fill  this  garret  with  gold  this  very 
night.  But  you  love  this  man,  and  so  you  let  him  perish 
while  you  prate  of  '  shame.'     Oh-ho  !  that  is  a  woman  I" 

He  went  away  through  the  blackness  and  the  stench, 
muttering,  as  he  struck  his  staff  upon  each  stair, — 

"  The  picture  will  feed  the  stove ;  the  law  will  give  me 
that." 

She  heard  and  shivered,  and  looked  at  the  bed  of  straw, 
and  on  the  great  canvas  of  the  Barabbas. 

Before  another  day  had  come  and  gone,  he  would  lie 
in  the  common  ditch  of  the  poor,  and  the  work  of  his 
hand  would  be  withered,  as  a  scroll  withers  in  a  flame. 

If  she  tried  once  more  ?  If  she  sought  human  pity, 
human  aid  ?  Some  deliverance,  some  mercy — who  could 
say  ? — might  yet  be  found,  she  thought.  The  gods  were 
dead  ;  but  men, — were  they  all  more  wanton  than  the 
snake,  more  cruel  than  the  scorpion  ? 

For  the  first  time  in  seven  days  she  left  his  side. 

She  rose  and  staggered  from  the  garret,  down  the 
stairway,  into  the  lower  stories  of  the  wilderness  of 
wood  and  stone. 

She  traced  her  way  blindly  to  the  places  she  had 
known.  They  closed  their  doors  in  haste,  and  fled  from 
her  in  terror. 

They  had  heard  that  she  had  gone  to  tend  some  mad- 
man,  plague-stricken   with   some   nameless   fever ;    and 
those  wretched  lives  to  life  clung  closely,  with  a  frantic 
ove. 


516  FOLLE-FARINE. 

One  woman  she  stayed,  and  held  with  timid,  eager 
hands.  Of  this  woman  she  had  taken  nothing  all  the 
summer  long  in  wage  for  waking  her  tired  eyes  at  day- 
break. 

"  Have  pity !"  she  muttered.  "  You  are  poor,  indeed, 
I  know  ;  but  help  me.     He  dies  there  !" 

The  woman  shook  her  off,  and  shrank. 

"Get  you  gone!"  she  cried.  "My  little  child  will 
sicken  if  you  breathe  on  her  I" 

The  others  said  the  same,  some  less  harshly,  some  more 
harshly.     Twice  or  thrice  they  added : 

"  You  beg  of  us,  and  send  the  jewels  back  ?  Go  and 
be  wise.  Make  your  harvest  of  gold  whilst  you  can. 
Reap  while  you  may  in  the  yellow  fields  with  the  sharp, 
sure  sickle  of  youth  !" 

Not  one  among  them  braved  the  peril  of  a  touch  of 
pity ;  not  one  among  them  asked  the  story  of  her  woe ; 
and  when  the  little  children  ran  to  her,  their  mothers 
plucked  them  back,  and  cried, — 

"  Art  mad  ?     She  is  plague-stricken." 

She  went  from  them  in  silence,  and  left  them,  and 
passed  out  into  the  open  air. 

In  all  this  labyrinth  of  roofs,  in  all  these  human  herds, 
she  yet  thought,  "  Surely  there  must  be  some  who  pity?" 

For  even  yet  she  was  so  young;  and  even  yet  she 
knew  the  world  so  little. 

She  went  out  into  the  streets. 

Her  brain  was  on  fire,  and  her  heart  seemed  frozen ; 
her  lips  moved  without  sound,  and  unconsciously  shaped 
the  words  which  night  and  day  pursued  her,  "  A  little 
gold,— a  little  gold  1" 

So  slight  a  thing,  they  said,  and  yet  high  above  reach 
as  Aldebaran,  when  it  glistened  through  the  storm-wrack 
of  the  rain. 

Why  could  he  have  not  been  content — she  had  been — 
with  the  rush  of  the  winds  over  the  plains,  the  strife  of 
the  flood  and  the  hurricane,  the  smell  of  the  fruit-hung 
ways  at  night,  the  cool,  green  shadows  of  the  summer 
woods,  the  courses  of  the  clouds,  the  rapture  of  the  keen 
air  blowing  from  the  sea,  the  flight  of  a  bird  over  the 
tossing  poppies,  the  day-song  of  the  lark  ?  All  these  were 


FOLLE-FARINE.  51f 

life  enough  for  her ;  were  freedom,  loveliness,  companion- 
ship, and  solace.  Ah,  God  !  she  thought,  if  only  these 
had  made  the  world  of  his  desires  likewise.  And  even 
in  her  ghastlier  grief  her  heart  sickened  for  them  in  vain 
anguish  as  she  went, — these  the  pure  joys  of  earth  and 
air  which  were  her  only  heritage. 

She  went  out  into  the  streets. 

It  was  a  night  of  wind  and  rain. 

The  lamps  flickered  through  the  watery  darkness. 
Beggars,  and  thieves,  and  harlots  jostled  her  in  the  nar- 
row ways. 

"It  must  be  hell, — the  hell  of  the  Christians,"  she 
muttered,  as  she  stood  alone  on  the  flints  of  the  roads,  in 
the  rancid  smell,  in  the  hideous  riot,  in  the  ghastly  mirth, 
in  the  choking  stench,  in  the  thick  steam  of  the  darkness, 
whose  few  dull  gleams  of  yellow  light  served  to  show 
the  false  red  on  a  harlot's  cheek,  or  the  bleeding  wound 
on  a  crippled  horse,  or  the  reeling  dance  of  a  drunkard. 

It  was  the  hell  of  the  Christians:  in  it  there  was  no 
hope  for  her. 

She  moved  on  with  slow  unconscious  movement  of  her 
limbs ;  her  hair  blew  back,  her  eyes  had  a  pitiless  won- 
der in  their  vacant  stare;  her  bloodless  face  had  the  horror 
in  it  that  Greek  sculptors  gave  to  the  face  of  those  whom 
a  relentless  destiny  pursued  and  hunted  down ;  ever  and 
again  she  looked  back  as  she  went,  as  though  some  name- 
less, shapeless,  unutterable  horror  were  behind  her  in  her 
steps. 

The  people  called  her  mad,  and  laughed  and  hooted 
her ;  when  they  had  any  space  to  think  of  her  at  all. 

"  A  little  food,  a  little  wine,  for  pity's  sake,"  she  mur- 
mured ;  for  her  own  needs  she  had  never  asked  a  crust 
in  charity,  but  for  his, — she  would  have  kissed  the  mud 
from  the  feet  of  any  creature  who  would  have  had  thus 
much  of  mercy. 

In  answer  they  only  mocked  her,  some  struck  her  in 
the  palm  of  her  outstretched  hand.  Some  called  her  by 
foul  names;  some  seized  her  with  a  drunken  laugh,  and 
cursed  her  as  she  writhed  from  their  lewd  hold  ;  some, 
and  these  often  women,  whispered  to  her  of  the  bagnio 
and  the  brothel ;  some  muttered  against  her  as  a  thief; 

44 


518  FOLLE-FARINE. 

one,  a  youth,  who  gave  her  the  gentlest  answer  that  she 
had,  murmured  in  her  ear,  "  A  beggar  ?  with  that  face  ? 
come  tarry  with  me  to-night." 

She  went  on  through  the  sulphurous  yellow  glare,  and 
the  poisonous  steam  of  these  human  styes,  shuddering 
from  the  hands  that  grasped,  the  voices  that  wooed  her, 
the  looks  that  ravished  her,  the  laughs  that  mocked  her. 

It  was  the  hell  of  the  Christians :  it  was  a  city  at  mid- 
night ;  and  its  very  stones  seem  to  arise  and  give  tongue 
in  her  derision  and  cry,  "Oh,  fool,  you  dreamt  of  a  sacri- 
fice which  should  be  honor  ;  of  a  death,  which  should  be 
release;  of  a  means  whereby  through  you  the  world 
should  hear  the  old  songs  of  the  gods  ?  Oh,  fool !  We 
are  Christians  here  :  and  we  only  gather  the  reeds  of  the 
river  to  bruise  them  and  break  them,  and  thrust  them, 
songless  and  dead,  in  the  name  of  our  Lord." 

She  stumbled  on  through  the  narrow  ways. 

After  a  little  space  they  widened,  and  the  lights  multi- 
plied, and  through  the  rushing  rains  she  saw  the  gay 
casements  of  the  houses  of  pleasure. 

On  the  gust  of  wind  there  came  a  breath  of  fragrance 
from  a  root  of  autumn  blossom  in  a  balcony.  The  old 
fresh  woodland  smell  smote  her  as  with  a  blow ;  the 
people  in  the  street  looked  after  her. 

"  She  is  mad,"  they  said  to  one  another,  and  went 
onward. 

She  came  to  a  broad  place,  which  even  in  that  night  of 
storm  was  still  a  blaze  of  fire,  and  seemed  to  her  to  laugh 
through  all  its  marble  mask,  and  all  its  million  eyes  of 
golden  light.     A  cruel  laugh  which  mocked  and  said, — 

"  The  seven  chords  of  the  lyre  ;  who  listens,  who  cares, 
who  has  ears  to  hear  ?  But  the  rod  of  wealth  all  women 
kiss,  and  to  its  rule  all  men  crawl ;  forever.  You  dreamt 
to  give  him  immortality  ? — fool !  Give  him  gold — give 
him  gold !  We  are  Christians  here :  and  we  have  but 
one  God." 

Under  one  of  the  burning  cressets  of  flame  there  was  a 
slab  of  stone  on  which  were  piled,  bedded  in  leaves,  all 
red  and  gold,  with  pomp  of  autumn,  the  fruits  of  the 
vine  in  great  clear  pyramids  of  white  and  purple  ;  tossed 
there  so  idly  in  such  profusion  from  the  past  vintage- 


FOLLE-FARINE.  51 9 

time,  that  a  copper  coin  or  two  could  buy  a  feast  for  half  a 
score  of  mouths.  Some  of  the  clusters  rotted  already 
from  their  over-ripeness. 

She  looked  at  them  with  the  passionate  woeful  eyes  of 
a  dog  mad  with  thirst,  which  can  see  water  and  yet 
cannot  reach  it.  She  leaned  towards  them,  she  caught 
their  delicious  coldness  in  her  burning  hands,  she  breathed 
in  their  old  familiar  fragrance  with  quick  convulsive 
breath. 

"  He  dies  there  V\  she  muttered,  lifting  her  face  to  the 
eyes  of  the  woman  guarding  them.  "  He  dies  there ; 
would  you  give  me  a  little  cluster,  ever  such  a  little  one, 
to  cool  his  mouth,  for  pity's  sake  ?" 

The  woman  thrust  her  away,  and  raised,  shrill  and 
sharp  through  all  the  clamor  of  the  crowd,  the  cry  of 
thief. 

A  score  of  hands  were  stretched  to  seize  her,  only  the 
fleetness  of  her  feet  saved  her.  She  escaped  from  them, 
and  as  a  hare  flies  to  her  form,  so  she  fled  to  the  place 
whence  she  came. 

She  had  done  all  she  could ;  she  had  made  one  effort, 
for  his  sake ;  and  all  living  creatures  had  repulsed  her. 
None  would  believe ;  none  would  pity ;  none  would  hear. 
Her  last  strength  was  broken,  her  last  faint  hope  had 
failed. 

In  her  utter  wretchedness  she  ceased  to  wonder,  she 
ceased  to  revolt,  she  accepted  the  fate  which  all  men 
told  her  was  her  heritage  and  portion. 

"  It  was  I  who  was  mad,"  she  thought ;  "  so  mad,  so 
vain,  to  dream  that  1  might  ever  be  chosen  as  the  reed 
was  chosen.  If  I  can  save  him,  anyhow,  what  matter, 
what  matter  for  me  ?" 

She  went  back  to  the  place  where  he  lay — dying,  un- 
less help  came  to  him.  She  climbed  the  stairway,  and 
stole  through  the  foulness  and  the  darkness  of  the  wind- 
ing ways,  and  retraced  her  steps,  and  stood  upon  his 
threshold. 

She  had  been  absent  but  one  hour ;  yet  already  the 
last,  most  abject,  most  wretched  penalty  of  death  had 
come  to  him.     They  robbed  him  in  his  senselessness. 

The  night  was  wet.     The  rain  dropped  through  the 


520  FOLLE-FARINE. 

roof.  The  rats  fought  on  the  floor  and  climbed  the  walls. 
The  broken  lattice  blew  to  and  fro  with  every  gust  of 
wind. 

A  palsied  crone,  with  ravenous  haDds,  sheared  the 
locks  of  his  fair  hair,  muttering,  "  They  will  fetch  a  stoup 
of  brandy  ;  and  they  would  take  them  to-morrow  in  the 
dead-house." 

The  old  man  who  owned  the  garret  crammed  into  a 
wallet  such  few  things  of  metal,  or  of  wood,  or  of  paper 
as  were  left  in  the  utter  poverty  of  the  place,  muttering, 
as  he  gathered  the  poor  shreds  of  art,  "  They  will  do  to 
burn ;  they  will  do  to  burn.  At  sunrise  I  will  get  help 
and  carry  the  great  canvas  down." 

The  rats  hurried  to  their  holes  at  the  light ;  the  hag 
let  fall  her  shears,  and  fled  through  an  opening  in  the 
wall. 

The  old  man  looked  up  and  smiled  with  a  ghastly  leer 
upon  her  in  the  shadows. 

<l  To-morrow  I  will  have  the  great  canvas,"  he  said, 
as  he  passed  out,  bearing  his  wallet  with  him.  "  And 
the  students  will  give  me  a  silver  bit,  for  certain,  for  that 
fine  corpse  of  his.  It  will  make  good  work  for  their 
knives  and  their  moulding-clay.  And  he  will  be  dead  to- 
morrow ; — dead,  dead." 

And  he  grinned  in  her  eyes  as  he  passed  her.  A 
shiver  shook  her  ;  she  said  nothing ;  it  seemed  to  her  as 
though  she  would  never  speak  again. 

She  set  down  her  lamp,  and  crossed  the  chamber,  and 
kneeled  beside  the  straw  that  made  his  bed. 

She  was  quite  calm. 

She  knew  that  the  world  gave  her  one  chance — one 
only.  She  knew  that  men  alone  reigned,  and  that  the 
gods  were  dead. 

She  flung  herself  beside  him  on  the  straw  and  wound 
her  arms  about  .him,  and  laid  his  head  to  rest  upon  her 
heart;  one  moment — he  would  never  know. 

Between  them  there  would  be  forever  silence.  He 
would  never  know. 

Greatness  would  come  to  him,  and  the  dominion  of 
gold;  and  the  work  of  his  hands  would  pass  amidst  the 
treasures  of  the  nations;   and  he  would  live  and  arise 


FOLLE-FARINE.  521 

and  say,  "  The  desire  of  my  heart  is  mine ;" — and  yet  he 
would  never  know  that  one  creature  had  so  loved  him 
that  she  had  perished  more  horribly  than  by  death  to 
save  him. 

If  he  lived  to  the  uttermost  years  of  man,  he  would 
never  know  how,  body  and  soul,  she  had  passed  away  to 
destruction  for  his  sake. 

To  die  with  him  ! 

She  laughed  to  think  how  sweet  and  calm  such  sacri- 
fice as  that  bad  been. 

Amidst  the  folded  lilies,  on  the  white  waters,  as  the 
moon  rose, — she  laughed  to  think  how  she  had  sometimes 
dreamed  to  slay  herself  in  such  tender  summer  peace  for 
him.  That  was  how  women  perished  whom  men  loved, 
and  loved  enough  to  die  with  them,  their  lips  upon  each 
other's  to  the  last.     But  she 

Death  in  peace  ;  sacrifice  in  honor  ;  a  little  memory  in 
a  human  heart ;  a  little  place  in  a  great  hereafter ;  these 
were  things  too  noble  for  her — so  they  said. 

A  martyrdom  in  shame ;  a  life  in  ignominy — these  were 
all  to  which  she  might  aspire — so  they  said. 

Upon  his  breast  women  would  sink  to  sleep ;  among 
his  hair  their  hands  would  wander,  and  on  his  mouth 
their  sighs  would  spend  themselves.  Shut  in  the  folded 
leaves  of  the  unblossomed  years  some  dreams  of  passion 
and  some  flower  of  love  must  lie  for  him — that  she  knew. 

She  loved  him  with  that  fierce  and  envious  force  which 
grudged  the  wind  its  privilege  to  breathe  upon  his  lips, 
the  earth  its  right  to  bear  his  footsteps,  which  was  forever 
jealous  of  the  mere  echo  of  his  voice,  avaricious  of  the 
mere  touch  of  his  hand.  And  when  she  gave  him  to  the 
future,  she  gave  him  to  other  eyes,  that  would  grow  blind 
with  passion,  meeting  his;  to  other  forms,  that  would 
burn  with  sweetest  shame  beneath  his  gaze  ;  to  other  lives, 
whose  memories  would  pass  with  his  to  the  great  Here- 
after, made  immortal  by  his  touch :  all  these  she  gave,  she 
knew. 

Almost  it  was  stronger  than  her  strength.  Almost  she 
yielded  to  the  desire  which  burned  in  her  to  let  him  die, 
— and  die  there  with  him, — and  so  hold  him  forever  hers, 
and  not  the  world's;  his  and  none  other's  in  the  eternal 

44* 


522  FOLLE-FARINE. 

union  of  the  grave,  so  that  with  hers  his  beauty  should  be 
consumed,  and  so  that  with  hers  his  body  should  be  shut 
from  human  sight,  and  the  same  corruption  feed  together 
on  their  hearts. 

Almost  she  yielded ;  but  the  greatness  of  her  love  was 
stronger  than  its  vileness,  and  its  humility  was  more  per- 
fect than  its  cruelty. 

It  seemed  to  her — mad,  and  bruised,  and  stunned  with 
her  misery — that  for  a  thing  so  worthless  and  loveless 
and  despised  as  she  to  suffer  deadliest  shame  to  save  a 
life  so  great  as  his  was,  after  all,  a  fate  more  noble  than 
she  could  have  hoped.  For  her — what  could  it  matter  ? — 
a  thing  baser  than  the  dust, — whether  the  feet  of  men 
trampled  her  in  scorn  a  little  more,  a  little  less,  before  she 
sank  away  into  the  eternal  night  wherein  all  things  are 
equal  and  all  things  forgotten. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

That  night  the  moon  found  the  Red  Mouse,  and  said, — 

"  Did  I  not  declare  aright  ?  Over  every  female  thing 
you  are  victorious — soon  or  late  ?" 

But  the  Red  Mouse  answered, — 

"  Nay,  not  so.  For  the  soul  still  is  closed  against  me ; 
and  the  soul  still  is  pure.  But  this  men  do  not  see,  and 
women  cannot  know ; — they  are  so  blind." 


FOLLE-FARINE.  523 


CHAPTER  XYi: 

Ere  another  year  had  been  fully  born,  the  world  spoke 
in  homage  and  in  wonder  of  two  things. 

The  one,  a  genius  which  had  suddenly  arisen  in  its 
midst,  and  taken  vengeance  for  the  long  neglect  of  bitter 
years,  and  scourged  the  world  with  pitiless  scorn  until, 
before  this  mighty  struggle  which  it  had  dared  once  to 
deride  and  to  deny,  it  crouched  trembling;  and  wondered 
and  did  homage ;  and  said  in  fear,  "  Truly  this  man  is 
great,  and  truth  is  terrible." 

The  other, — the  bodily  beauty  of  a  woman  ;  a  beauty 
rarely  seen  in  open  day,  but  only  in  the  innermost  re- 
cesses of  a  sensualist's  palace ;  a  creature  barefooted, 
with  chains  of  gold  about  her  ankles,  and  loose  white 
robes  which  showed  each  undulation  of  the  perfect  limbs, 
and  on  her  breast  the  fires  of  a  knot  of  opal ;  a  creature 
in  whose  eyes  there  Was  one  changeless  look,  as  of  some 
desert  beast  taken  from  the  freedom  of  the  air  and  cast 
to  the  darkness  of  some  unutterable  horror ;  a  creature 
whose  lips  were  forever  mute,  mute  as  the  tortured  lips 
of  Lsena. 

One  day  the  man  whom  the  nations  at  last  had 
crowned,  saw  the  creature  whom  it  was  a  tyrant's 
pleasure  to  place  beside  him  now  and  then,  in  the 
public  ways,  as  a  tribune  of  Rome  placed  in  his  chariot 
of  triumph  the  vanquished  splendor  of  some  imperial 
thing  of  Asia  made  his  slave. 

Across  the  clear  hot  light  of  noon  the  eyes  of  Arslan 
fell  on  hers  for  the  first  time  since  they  had  looked  on 
her  amidst  the  pale  poppies,  in  the  noonrise,  in  the  fields. 

They  smiled  on  her  with  a  cold,  serene,  ironic  scorn. 

"  So  soon  V  he  murmured,  and  passed  onward,  whilst 
the  people  made  way  for  him  in  homage. 

He  had  his  heart's  desire.  He  was  great.  He  only 
smiled  to  think — all  women  were  alike. 


524  FOLLE-FARINE. 

Her  body  shrank,  her  head  dropped,  as  though  a  knife 
were  thrust  into  her  breast. 

But  her  lips  kept  their  silence  to  the  last.  They  were 
so  strong,  they  were  so  mute  ;  they  did  not  even  once 
cry  out  against  him,  "  For  thy  sake  1" 


CHAPTER  XYII. 

In  the  springtime  of  the  year  three  gods  watched  by 
the  river. 

The  golden  willows  blew  in  the  low  winds;  the  waters 
came  and  went ;  the  moon  rose  full  and  cold  over  a  sil- 
very stream  ;  the  reeds  sighed  in  the  silence.  Two  win- 
ters had  drifted  by,  and  one  hot,  drowsy  summer;  and  all 
the  white  still  shapes  upon  the  walls  of  the  granary 
already  had  been  slain  by  the  cold  breath  of  Time.  The 
green  weeds  waved  in  the  empty  casements  ;  the  chance- 
sown  seeds  of  thistles  and  of  bell-flowers  were  taking  leaf 
between  the  square  stones  of  the  paven  floors ;  on  the 
deserted  threshold  lichens  and  brambles  climbed  together ; 
the  filmy  ooze  of  a  rank  vegetation  stole  over  the  loveli- 
ness of  Persephone  and  devoured  one  by  one  the  immortal 
offspring  of  Zeus  ;  about  the  feet  of  the  bound  sun-king 
in  Phaeros  and  over  the  calm  serene  mockery  of  Hermes, 
smile  the  gray  nets  of  the  spiders'  webs  had  been  woven 
to  and  fro,  around  and  across,  with  the  lacing  of  a 
million  threads,  as  Fate  weaves  round  the  limbs  and 
covers  the  eyes  of  mortals  as  they  stumble  blindly  from 
their  birthplace  to  their  grave.  All  things,  the  damp 
and  the  dust,  the  frost  and  the  scorch,  the  newts  and  the 
rats,  the  fret  of  the  flooded  water,  and  the  stealing  sure 
inroad  of  the  mosses  that  everywhere  grew  from  the 
dews  and  the  fogs  had  taken  and  eaten,  in  hunger  or 
sport,  or  had  touched  and  thieved  from,  then  left  gan- 
grened and  ruined. 

The  three  gods  alone  remained,  who,  being  the  sons  of 
eternal  night,  are  unharmed  and  unaltered  by  any  passage 


FOLLE-FARWE.  525 

of  the  years  of  earth, — the  only  gods  who  never  bend 
beneath  the  yoke  of  Time,  but  unblenchingly  behold  the 
nations  wither  as  uncounted  leaves,  and  the  lands  and 
the  seas  change  places,  and  the  cities  and  the  empires 
pass  away  as  a  tale  that  is  told,  and  the  deities  that  are 
worshiped  in  the  temples  change  name  and  attributes  and 
cultus  at  the  wanton  will  of  the  age  that  begat  them. 

In  the  still,  cold  moonlit  air  they  stand  together  hand 
in  hand,  looking  outward  through  the  white  night-mists. 
Other  gods  perished  with  the  faith  of  each  age  as  it 
changed;  other  gods  lived  by  the  breath  of* men's  lips, 
the  tears  of  prayer,  the  smoke  of  sacrifice ;  but  they— 
their  empire  is  the  universe.  In  every  young  soul  that 
leaps  into  the  light  of  life,  rejoicing  blindly,  Oneiros  has 
dominion,  and  he  alone.  In  every  creature  that  breathes, 
from  the  conqueror  resting  on  a  field  of  blood  to  the  nest- 
bird  cradled  in  its  bed  of  leaves,  Hypnos  holds  a  sover- 
eignty which  nothing  mortal  can  long  resist  and  live. 
And  Thanatos — to  him  belongs  every  created  thing,  past, 
present,  and  to  come ;  beneath  his  foot  all  generations 
lie,  and  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand  he  holds  the  worlds. 
Though  the  earth  be  tenantless,  and  the  heavens  sunless, 
and  the  planets  shrivel  in  their  courses,  and  the  universe 
be  desolate  in  an  endless  night,  yet  through  the  eternal 
darkness  Thanatos  still  will  reign,  and  through  its 
eternal  solitudes  he  alone  will  wander  and  he  still  behold 
his  work. 

Deathless  as  themselves,  their  shadows  stood ;  and  the 
worm  and  the  lizard  and  the  newt  left  them  alone  and 
dared  not  wind  about  their  calm  clear  brows,  and  dared 
not  steal  to  touch  the  roses  at  their  lips, — knowing  that 
ere  the  birth  of  the  worlds  these  were,  and  when  the 
worlds  shall  have  perished  they  still  will  reign  on, — the 
slow,  sure,  soundless,  changeless  ministers  of  an  eternal 
rest,  of  an  eternal  oblivion. 

A  little  light  strayed  in  from  the  gray  skies,  pale  as 
the  primrose-flowers  that  grow  among  the  reeds  upon 
the  shore,  and  found  its  way  to  them  trembling,  and 
shone  in  the  far-seeing  depths  of  their  unfathomable  eyes. 

To  eyes  which  spake  and  said:  "  Sleep,  Dreams,  and 
Death  j — we  are  the  only  gods  that  answer  prayer." 


526  FOLLE-FARINE. 

With  the  faint  gleam  of  the  tender  evening  light  there 
came  across  the  threshold  a  human  form,  barefooted, 
bareheaded,  with  broken  links  of  golden  chains  gleaming 
here  and  there  upon  her  limbs,  with  white  robes  hanging 
heavily,  soaked  with  dews  and  rains ;  with  sweet  familiar 
smells  of  night-born  blossoms,  of  wet  leaves,  of  budding 
palm-boughs,  of  rich  dark  seed-sown  fields,  and  the  white 
flower-foam  of  orchards  shedding  their  fragrance  from 
about  her  as  she  moved. 

Her  face  was  bloodless  as  the  faces  of  the  gods ;  her 
eyes  had  a  look  of  blindness,  her  lips  were  close-locked 
together;  her  feet  stumbled  often,  yet  her  path  was 
straight. 

She  had  hidden  by  day,  she  had  fled  by  night;  all 
human  creatures  had  scattered  from  her  path,  in  terror 
of  her  as  of  some  unearthly  thing:  she  had  made  her 
way  blindly  yet  surely  through  the  sweet  cool  air, 
through  the  shadows  and  the  grasses,  through  the  sigh- 
ing sounds  of  bells,  through  the  leafy  ways,  through  the 
pastures  where  the  herds  were  sleeping,  through  the 
daffodils  blowing  in  the  shallow  brooks; — through  all 
the  things  for  which  her  life  had  been  athirst  so  long  and 
which  she  reached  too  late, — too  late  for  agy  coolness  of 
sweet  grass  beneath  her  limbs  to  give  her  rest ;  too  late 
for  any  twilight  song  of  missel-thrush  or  nferle  to  touch 
her  dumb  dead  heart  to  music ;  too  late  for  any  kiss  of 
clustering  leaves  to  heal  the  blistering  shame  that  burned 
upon  her  lips  and  withered  all  their  youth.  And  yet  she 
loved  them, — loved  them  never  yet  more  utterly  than 
now  when  she  came  back  to  them,  as  Persephone  to  the 
pomegranate-flowers  of  hell. 

She  crossed  the  threshold,  whilst  the  reeds  that  grew 
in  the  water  by  the  steps  bathed  her  feet  and  blew  to- 
gether softly  against  her  limbs,  sorrowing  for  this  life  so 
like  their  own,  which  had  dreamed  of  the  songs  of  the 
gods  and  had  only  heard  the  hiss  of  the  snakes. 

She  fell  at  the  feet  of  Thanatos.  The  bonds  of  her 
silence  were  loosened ;  the  lips  dumb  so  long  for  love's 
sake  found  voice  and  cried  out : 

"  How  long  ? — how  long?  Wilt  thou  never  take  pity, 
and  stoop,  and  say,  '  Enough'  ?    I  havt  kept  faith,  I  have 


FOLLE-FARINE.  527 

kept  silence,  to  the  end.  The  gods  know.  My  life  for 
his;  my  soul  for  his:  so  I  said.  So  I  have  given.  I 
would  not  have  it  otherwise.  Nay,  I  am  glad,  I  am 
content,  I  am  strong.  See, — I  have  never  spoken.  The 
gods  have  let  me  perish  in  his  stead.  Nay,  I  suffer 
nothing.  What  can  it  matter — for  me  ?  Nay,  I  thank 
thee  that  thou  hast  given  my  vileness  to  be  the  means  of 
his  glory.  He  is  immortal,  and  I  am  less  than  the  dust: 
— what  matter?  He  must  not  know;  he  must  never 
know;  and  one  day  I  might  be  weak,  or  mad,  and  speak. 
Take  me  whilst  still  I  am  strong.  A  little  while  agone, 
in  the  space  in  the  crowds  he  saw  me.  '  So  soon  V  he 
said, — and  smiled.  And  yet  I  live!  Keep  faith  with 
me;  keep  faith — at  last.  Slay  me  now, — quickly, — for 
pity's  sake  !     Just  once, — I  speak." 

Thanatos,  in  answer,  laid  his  hand  upon  her  lips,  and 
sealed  them,  and  their  secret  with  them,  mute,  for  ever- 
more. 

She  had  been  faithful  to  the  end. 

To  such  a  faith  there  is  no  recompense,  of  men  or  of 
the  gods,  save  only  death.  On  the  shores  of  the  river 
the  winds  swept  through  the  reeds,  and,  sighing  amidst 
them,  mourned,  saying,  "A  thing  as  free  as  we  are,  and 
as  fair  as  the  light,  has  perished  ;  a  thing  whose  joys 
were  made,  like  ours,  from  song  of  the  birds,  from  sight 
of  the  sun,  from  sound  of  the  waters,  from  smell  of  the 
fields,  from  the  tossing  spray  of  the  white  fruit-boughs, 
from  the  play  of  the  grasses  at  sunrise,  from  all  the 
sweet  and  innocent  liberties  of  earth  and  air.  She  has 
perished  as  a  trampled  leaf,  as  a  broken  shell,  as  a  rose 
that  falls  in  the  public  ways,  as  a  star  that  is  cast  down 
on  an  autumn  night.  She  has  died  as  the  dust  dies,  and 
none  sorrow.  What  matter  ? — what  matter  ?  Men  are 
wise,  and  gods  are  just, — they  say." 

The  moon  shone  cold  and  clear.  The  breath  of  the 
wild  thyme  was  sweet  upon  the  air.  The  leaves  blew 
together  murmuring.  The  shadows  of  the  clouds  were 
dark  upon  the  stream.  She  lay  dead  at  the  feet  of  the 
Sons  of  Night. 

The  Red  Mouse  sat  without,  and  watched,  and  said, 
"  To  the  end  she  hath  escaped  me."    The  noisome  creat- 


528  FOLLE-FARINE. 

ures  of  the  place  stole  away  trembling;  the  nameless 
things  begotten  by  loneliness  and  gloom  glided  to  their 
holes  as  though  afraid ;  the  blind  newts  crept  into  the 
utter  darkness  afar  off ;  the  pure  cool  winds  alone 
hovered  near  her,  and  moved  her  hair,  and  touched  her 
limbs  with  all  the  fragrance  of  forest  and  plain,  of  the  pure 
young  year  and  the  blossoming  woodlands,  of  the  green 
garden-ways  and  the  silvery  sea.  The  lives  of  the  earth 
and  the  air  and  the  waters  alone  mourned  for  this  life  which 
was  gone  from  amidst  them,  free  even  in  basest  bondage, 
pure  though  every  hand  had  cast  defilement  on  it,  in- 
corrupt through  all  corruption — for  love's  sake. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

In  the  springtime  of  the  year  three  reapers  cut  to  the 
roots  the  reeds  that  grew  by  the  river. 

They  worked  at  dawn  of  day:  the  skies  were  gray 
and  dark ;  the  still  and  misty  current  Solved  in  with  a 
full  tide ;  the  air  was  filled  with  the  scent  of  white  fruit- 
blossoms  ;  in  the  hush  of  the  daybreak  the  song  of  a  lark 
thrilled  the  silence;  under  the  sweep  of  the  steel  the 
reeds  fell. 

Resting  from  their  labors,  with  the  rushes  slain  around 
them,  they,  looking  vacantly  through  the  hollow  case- 
ments, saw  her  body  lying  there  at  the  feet  of  the  gods 
of  oblivion. 

At  first  they  were  shaken  and  afraid.  Then  the  gleam 
of  the  gold  upon  her  limbs  awakened  avarice  ;  and  avarice 
was  more  powerful  than  fear.  They  waded  through  the 
rushes  and  crossed  the  threshold,  and,  venturing  within, 
stood  looking  on  her  in  awe  and  wonder,  then  timorously 
touched  her,  and  turned  her  face  to  the  faint  light.  Then 
they  said  that  she  was  dead. 

"  It  is  that  evil  thing  come  back  upon  us  I"  they  mut- 
tered to  one  another,  and  stood  looking  at  one  another, 
and  at  her,  afraid. 


FOLLE-FARINE.  529 

They  spoke  in  whispers ;  they  were  very  fearful ;  it 
was  still  twilight. 

"  It  were  a  righteous  act  to  thrust  her  in  a  grave," 
they  murmured  to  one  another  at  the  last, — and  paused. 

"Ay,  truly,"  they  agreed.  "  Otherwise  she  may  break 
the  bonds  of  the  tomb,  and  rise  again,  and  haunt  us 
always  :  who  can  say  ?     But  the  gold " 

And  then  they  paused  again. 

"It  were  a  sin,"  one  murmured, — "it  were  a  sin  to 
bury,  the  pure  good  gold  in  darkness.  Even  if  it  came 
from  hell " 

"  The  priests  will  bless  it  for  us,"  answered  the  other 
twain. 

Against  the  reddening  skies  the  lark  was  singing. 

The  three  reapers  waited  a  little,  still  afraid,  then 
hastily,  as  men  slaughter  a  thing  they  dread  may  rise 
against  them,  they  stripped  the  white  robes  from  her 
and  drew  off  the  anklets  of  gold  from  her  feet,  and  the 
chains  of  gold  that  were  riven  about  her  breast  and 
limbs.  When  they  had  stripped  her  body  bare,  they 
.were  stricken  with  a  terror  of  the  dead  whom  they  thus 
violated  with  their  theft;  and,  being  consumed  with 
apprehension  lest  any,  as  the  day  grew  lighter,  should 
pass  by  there  and  see  what  they  had  done,  they  went 
out  in  trembling  haste,  and  together  dug  deep  down  into 
the  wet  sands,  where  the  reeds  grew,  and  dragged  her 
still  warm  body  unshrouded  to  the  air,  and  thrust  it 
down  there  into  its  nameless  grave,  and  covered  it,  and 
left  it  to  the  rising  of  the  tide. 

Then  with  the  gold  they  hurried  to  their  homes. 

The  waters  rose  and  washed  smooth  the  displaced 
soil,  and  rippled  in  a  sheet  of  silver  as  the  sun  rose  over 
the  place,  and  effaced  all  traces  of  their  work,  so  that  no 
man  knew  this  thing  which  they  had  done. 

In  her  death,  as  in  her  life,  she  was  friendless  and 
alone  ;  and  none  avenged  her. 

The  reeds  blew  together  by  the  river,  now  red  in  the 
daybreak,  now  white  in  the  moonrise ;  and  the  winds 
sighed  through  them  wearily,  for  they  were  songless, 
and  the  gods  were  dead. 

The  seasons  came  and  went;  the  waters  rose  and 
45 


£30  FOLLE-FARINE. 

sank;  in  the  golden  willows  the  young  birds  made  music 
with  their  wings ;  the  soft-footed  things  of  brake  and 
brush  ^tole  down  through  the  shade  of  the  leaves  and 
drank  at  the  edge  of  the  shore,  and  fled  away;  the  people 
passed  down  the  slow  current  of  the  stream  with  lily 
sheaves  of  the  blossoming  spring,  with  ruddy  fruitage  of 
the  summer  woods,  with  yellow  harvest  of  the  autumn 
fields, — passed  singing,  smiting  the  frail  songless  as  they 
went. 

But  none  paused  there. 

For  Thanatos  alone  knew, — Thanatos,  who  watched 
by  day  and  night  the  slain  reeds  sigh,  fruitless  and  root- 
less, on  the  empty  air, — Thanatos,  who  by  the  cold  sad 
patience  of  his  gaze  spoke,  saying, — 

"I  am  the  only  pity  of  the  world.  And  even  I — to 
every  mortal  thing  I  come  too  early  or  too  late." 


THE  END. 


POPULAR  WORKS 

PUBLISHED  BY 

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PHILADELPHIA. 

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LIPPINCOTT'S  PRONOUNCING    DICTIONARY 

OF 

BIOGRAPHY  AND    MYTHOLOGY 

Containing  Memoirs  of  the  Eminent  persons  of  all  Ages  and  Countries 
and  Accounts  of  the  Various  Subjects  of  the  Norse,  Hindoo  and 
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II.  SUCCINCT  BUT  COMPREHENSIVE  ACCOUNTS  OF  ALL  THE  MORE  INTEREST- 
ING SUBJECTS  OF  MYTHOLOGY. 

III.  A  LOGICAL  SYSTEM  OF  ORTHOGRAPHY. 

IV.  THE  ACCURATE  PRONUNCIATION  OF  THE  NAMES. 
V.  FULL  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  REFERENCES. 


"  I  have  taken  the  trouble  to  look  out  a 
large  number  of  names,  such  as  seemed 
to  me  good  tests  of  the  compass,  suf- 
ficency  and  accuracy  of  the  biographical 
notices.  The  result  has  been  in  a  high 
degree  satisfactory.  So  far  as  I  have  ex- 
amined nobody  was  omitted  that  deserved 
a  place,  and  the  just  proportions  were 
maintained  between  the  various  claim- 
ants to  their  page,  or  paragraph,  or  line. 
The  star  of  the  first  magnitude  was  not 
shorn  of  its  radiance,  and  the  scarcely  visi- 
ble spark  was  allowed  its  little  glimmer." — 
From  Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 

"  It  is  a  work  which  I  shall  be  glad  to 
possess,  both  on  account  of  the  fullness 
of  its  matter,  and  because  the  pronuncia- 
tion of  the  names  is  given.  I  have  had 
occasion,  from  the  other  works  of  Dr. 
^Thomas,  to  be  convinced  of  his  great  ex- 
actness in  that  respect.  The  work  will  be 
a  valuable  addition  to  the  books  of  refer- 
ence in  our  language." — From  William 
Cullen  Bryant. 


"  I  can  speak  in  high  terms  of  the  tho- 
roughness and  accuracy  with  which  the 
work  has  been  prepared.  It  is  a  store- 
house of  valuable  and  trustworthy  infor- 
mation. The  pronunciation  of  the  names, 
which  is  systematically  given,  will  add 
much  to  the  usefulness  of  the  work." — 
From  Prof.  James  Hadley,  Yale  Col' 
lege. 

"  I  think  that  the  work  when  completed 
will  supply  a  real  want.  I  was  especially 
pleased  with  the  sensible  and  learned 
preface  of  the  editor,  and  am  persuaded 
that  he  has  chosen  the  true  system  of 
orthography.  From  what  I  know  of  Dr. 
Thomas,  I  feel  sure  that  he  will  give  us  a 
book  that  may  be  depended  on  for  com- 
prehensiveness and  accuracy,  the  two 
great  desideranda  in  such  an  undertak- 
ing."— From  Prof.  Jas.  Russell  Low- 
ell. 

"  It  is  the  most  valuable  work  of  the 
kind  in  English  that  I  have  seen."-  -Front 
Gen.  R.  E.  Lee,  Washington  College. 


Special  Circulars,  containing  a  full  description  of  the  work,  with 
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Address  the  Publishers. 


PUBLICATIONS  OF  J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  &  CO. 


Bulwer' s  Novels.     Globe   Edition.     Complete  in 

twenty-two  volumes.  With  Frontispiece  to  each  volume.  Beau* 
tifully  printed  on  fine  tinted  paper.  i6mo.  Extra  cloth,  $33  \ 
extra  cloth,  gilt  top,  $38.50 ;  half  calf,  neat,  $55  ;  half  Turkey,  gitf 
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as  below,  in  extra  cloth,  at  $1.50  per  volume. 


The  Caxtons 1  vol. 

My  Novel 2  vols. 

What  will  He  Do  with  It  ?..2  vols. 

Devereux. 1  vol. 

Last  Days  of  Pompeii 1  vol. 

Leila,  Calderon  and  Pilgrims.  1  v. 

Rienzi 1  vol. 

The  Last  of  the  Barons. .  1  vol. 

Harold 1  vol. 

Eugene  Aram I  vol. 

"  The  Globe  edition  of  Bulwer  is  very 
neat  and  satisfactory  —  more  satisfactory 
than  any  other  issued  in  this  country." — 
Philada.  North  A  merican. 

"  The  Globe  edition  is  remarkable  for  a 
judicious  combination  of  cheapness,  legi- 
bility and  beauty." — Charleston  Courier. 

"  We  have  repeatedly  borne  witness  to 
"he  pre-eminence  of  the  Globe  over  all 
other  editions,  in  respect  to  cheapness, 
neatness  and  convenience  of  size." — Cin- 
cinnati Gazette. 

"The  clear-cut  type,  delicately-tinted 
paper  and  tasty  binding  of  this  Globe  edi- 
tion of  Bulwer' s  works  cannot  be  awarded 
too  much  praise. " — Rural  New  Yorker. 

"  We  repeat  what  we  have  so  often  be- 
fore stated — that  the  Globe  edition  is  the 
best  ever  issued  on  this  side  of  the  Atlan- 
tic."— New  Orleans  Times. 


Zanoni I  vol. 

Pelham 1  vol. 

The  Disowned 1  vol. 

Paul  Clifford I  vol. 

Ernest  Maltravers 1  vol. 

Godolphin I  vol. 

Alice 1  vol. 

Night  and  Morning 1  vol. 

Lucretia. 1  vol. 

A  Strange  Story 1  vol. 

"  The  Globe  edition  of  Bulwer  furnishes 
a  model  well  worthy  of  imitation."  — 
Philada.  Age. 

"  As  to  execution  and  price,  there  is  no 
better  edition  in  the  market" — Chicago 
Evening  journal. 

"  We  congratulate  this  well-known  Phi- 
ladelphia publishing  house  upon  furnish- 
ing so  complete,  so  legible,  so  compact 
and  so  beautiful  an  edition  of  the  writings 
of  this  great  novelist.  The  American 
book-buying  and  book-reading  public  wiU 
not  fail  to  place  this  fine  edition  upon  their 
library  shelves.  It  is  the  best  cheap  edition 
of  Bulwer  that  we  have  ever  seen.  It  is 
offered  at  the  low  price  of  $1.50  per  volume 
at  which  price  the  purchaser  gets  the  besl 
part  of  the  bargain." — Providence  Even- 
tng  Press. 


Readers  Novels.    Illustrated  Standard  Edition  of 

Charles  Reade's  Novels.  Complete  in  ten  vols.  i2mo.  With 
Engraved  Frontispiece  and  Vignette  Title  to  each.  Handsomelj 
bound  in  extra  cloth.  Price,  $15  per  set  Extra  cloth,  gilt  top 
$17  per  set.     Sold  separately,  in  extra  cloth,  as  follows : 


Hard  Cash $1.75 

Love   me  Little  Love  me 

Long 1.50 

Never  too  Late  to  Mend. .    1.75 

White  Lies 1.50 

Foul  Play 1.50 


The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth$i.75 

Griffith  Gaunt 1.50 

Peg  Woffington 1.25 

Christie  Johnstone 1.2$ 

The  Course  of  True  Love 
Never  did  Run  Smooth.    T.25 


PUBLICATIONS  OF  J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  &  CO. 


The  Old  Mam'selle's  Secret.     After  the  German 

of  E.  Marlitt,  author  of  "Gold  Elsie,"  "Countess  Gisela,"  &c. 
By  Mrs,  A.  L.  Wister.     Sixth  edition.     i2mo.     Cloth,  #1.75. 


of  'The  Initials,'  the  dramatic  unity  o* 
Reade,  and  the  graphic  power  of  Georg* 
Elliot." — Columbus  {O.)  Journal. 
"Appears  to  be  one  of  the  most  interest- 
ing stories  that  we  have  had  from  Eiuopt 
for  many  a  day." — Boston  Traveler. 


"A  more  charming  story,  and  one  which, 
having  once  commenced,  it  seemed  more 
difficult  to  leave,  we  have  not  met  with  for 
many  a  day." — The  Round  Table. 

"Is  one  of  the  most  intense,  concentrated, 
compact  novels  of  the  day.  .  .  .  And  the 
work  has  the  minute  fidelity  of  the  author 

Gold  Elsie,     From  the  German  of  E.   Marlitt \ 

author  of  the  "  Old  Mam'selle's  Secret,"  "  Countess  Gisela,"  &c. 
By  Mrs.  A.  L.  Wister.    Fifth  edition.     i2mo.    Cloth,  #1.75. 

"A  charming  book.     It  absorbs  your  I      "A  charming  story  charmingly  told."— 
attention  from  the.-  title-page  to  the  end." —      Baltimore  Gazette. 
The  Home  Circle.  ' 

Countess  Gisela.     From  the  German  of  E.  Mur- 

litt,  author  of  "The  Old  Mam'selle's  Secret,"  "Gold  Elsie," 
"  Over  Yonder,"  &c  By  Mrs.  A.  L.  Wister.  Third  Edition. 
i2mo.     Cloth,  $1.75. 


"  There  is  more  dramatic  power  in  this 
than  in  any  of  the  stories  by  the  same 
author  that  we  have  read." — NO.  Times. 

"  It  is  a  story  that  arouses  the  interest 


of  the  reader  from  the  outset" — Pittsburg 
Gazette. 

"The  best    work  by  this   author.*  — 
Philada.  Telegraph. 


Over  Yonder.     From  the  German  of  E.  Marlitt^ 

author  of  "Countess  Gisela,"  "Gold  Elsie,"  &c.     Third  edition. 
With  a  full-page  Illustration.    8vo.    Paper  cover,  30  cts. 


" '  Over  Yonder'  is  a  charming  novel- 
ette. The  admirers  of  '  Old  Mam'selle's 
Secret'  will  give  it  a  glad  reception,  while 
those  who  are  ignorant  of  the  merits  of 


this  author  will  find  in  it  a  pleasant  in- 
troduction to  the  works  of  a  gifted  writer." 
— Daily  Sentinel. 


Three  Thousand  Miles  through  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains. By  A.  K.  McClure.  Illustrated.  i2mo.  Tinted  paper 
Extra  cloth,  $2. 


"  Those  wishing  to  post  themselves  on 
the  subject  of  that  magnificent  and  ex- 
traordinary Rocky  Mountain  dominion 
should  read  the  Colonel's  book." — New 
Yo-sk  Times. 

"  The  work  makes  one  of  the  most  satis- 
factory itineraries  that  has  been  given  to 
us  from  this  region,  and  must  be  read 
with  both  pleasure  and  profit." — Philada. 
North  A  tturican. 

u  We  have  never  seen  a  book  of  Western 
travels  which  so  thoroughly  and  completely 
satisfied  us  as  this,  nor  one  written  in  such 


agreeableand  charming  style." — Bradford 
Reporter. 

"The  letters  contain  many  incidents  of 
Indian  life  and  adventures  of  travel  which 
impart  novel  charms  to  them." — Chicago 
Evening  Journal. 

"  The  book  is  full  of  useful  information.*' 
— New  York  Independent. 

"  Let  him  who  would  have  some  propel 
conception  of  the  limitless  material  rich- 
ness of  the  Rocky  Mountain  region,  read 
this  bo<  k." — Charleston  [6\  C.)  Courier. 


PUBLICATIONS  OF  J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  <&*   CO. 

Tricotrin.      The  Story  of  a  Waif  and  Stray.    By 

Ouida,  author  of  "  Under  Two  P'lags,"  &c.     With  Portrait  of  the 
Author  from  an  Engraving  on  Steel.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $2. 

The  book  abounds  in  beautiful  senti- 


"The  story  is  full  of  vivacity  and  of 
thrilling  interest." — Pittsburg  Gazette. 

"  Tricotrin  is  a  work  of  absolute  power, 
some  truth  and  deep  interest." — N.  Y. 
Day  Book. 


ments,  expressed  in  a  concentrated,  com 
pact  style  which  cannot  fail  to  be  attractive, 
and  will  be  read  with  pleasure  in  everj 
household." — San  Francisco  Times. 


Granville   de  Vigne;    or.  Held  in   Bondage.     A 

Tale  of  the  Day.    By  Ouida,  author  of  "  Idalia,"  "  Tricotrin,"  &c, 
i2mo.    Cloth,  $2. 

"This  is  one  of  the  most  powerful  and  I  century,  so  prolific  in  light  literature,  hai 
ipicy  works  of  fiction  which  the  present  |  produced." 

Strathmore ;  or,  Wrought  by  His  Own  Hand.    A 

Novel.    By  Ouida,  author  of  "  Granville  de  Vigne,"  &c     121110. 
Cloth,  $2. 

u  It  is  romance  of  the  intense  school,  I  Braddon  and  Mrs.  Wood,  while  its  scenes 
but  it  is  written  with  more  power,  fluency  and  characters  are  taken  from  high  life." 
and  brilliancy  than   the  works  of  Miss  |  — Boston  Transcript. 

Chandos.  A  Novel.   By  Ouida ,  author  of  '"Strath- 

more,"  "Idalia,"  &c.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $2. 


what  exaggerated  portraiture  of  scenes  and 
characters,  but  it  is  a  story  of  surpassing 
power  and  interest" — Pittsburg  Evening 
Chronicle. 


"  Those  who  have  read  these  two  last- 
named  brilliant  works  of  fiction  (Granville 
ie  Vigne  and  Strathmore)  will  be  sure  to 
read  Chandos.  It  is  characterized  by  the 
same  gorgeous  coloring  of  style  and  some- 

Idalia.    A  Novel.    By  Ouida,  author  of  "Strath- 

more,"  "  Tricotrin,"  &c     i2mo.     Cloth,  $2. 


"It  is  a  story  of  love  and  hatred,  of 
affection  and  jealousy,  of  intrigue  and  de- 
votion. .  .  .  We  think  this  novel  will  ?*- 
tain  a  wide  popularity,  especially  amov.g 


those  whose  refined  taste  enables  them  to 
appreciate  and  enjoy  what  is  truly  beau- 
tiful   in    literature."  —  Albany  Evening 


Journal. 

Under    Two  Flags.     A  Story  of  the  Household 

and  the  Desert     By  Ouida,  author  of  "  Tricotrin,"  "  Granville  de 

Vigne,"  &c.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $2. 

"  No  one  will  be  able  to  resist  its  fasci-      of  Ouida.     It  is  enough  of  itself  to  estab- 

nation  who  once  begins  its  perusal." —      lish  her  fame  as  one  of  the  most  eloquent 

Pkilada.  Evening  Bulletin.  and  graphic  writers  of  fiction  now  living." 

"  This  is  probably  the  most  popular  work      — Chicago  Journal  0/  Commerce. 

Ouida 's  Novelettes.     First   Series,   Cecil   Castle- 

maine's  Gage.  Second  Series  y  Randolph  Gordon.  Third  Series 
Beatrice  Boville.  Each  of  these  volumes  contains  a  selection  of 
"  Ouida's"  Popular  Tales  and  Stories.     i2mo.    Cloth,  each  $  1.75 


"  The  many  works  already  in  print  by 
this  versatile  authoress  have  established 
her  reputation  as  a  novelist,  and  these 
short  stones  conirif -me  largely  to  the  stock 


of  pleasing  narratives  and  adventures  aliva 
to  the  memory  of  all  who  are  given  tv 
romance  and  fiction."— A7.  Haven  Jour. 


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